Death penalty untested State has no execution chamber, procedures

Now he questions whether a jury would shrug off New Hampshire's
long-standing unease with the death penalty and sentence Michael "Stix"
Addison to death if he's convicted in the shooting death of Manchester
Police Officer Michael Briggs.

"There is a family out there grieving, two children without a father," said
Cushing, founder of Murder Victims' Families for Human Rights, which
represents victims across the country who oppose capital punishment. He
notes that 13 states don't have capital punishment.

New Hampshire appears to be a state divided over capital punishment. The
statute is narrow and has been applied only once in the last decade and not
carried out since 1939. The state has no one on death row and no death
chamber in which to administer the prescribed lethal injection or hanging,
if injection is not possible.

On Wednesday, the attorney general's office won legislative approval to
spend $420,000 pursuing a death penalty case against Addison. The cost could
rise well above $1 million.

"Because they haven't done a capital case in New Hampshire, people don't
understand the length of the process," he said. "Death cases are different.
Death penalty litigation is almost a separate speciality in law."

Six years ago, the Legislature voted to repeal the death penalty. Then-Gov.
Jeanne Shaheen brushed off appeals from a former president and Nobel Peace
Prize winner - among others - and vetoed the repeal bill, leaving the law on
the books. Since then anti-death penalty advocates have repeatedly tried to
repeal the law.

Briggs, 35, who was married with two sons, was shot 15 minutes before his
overnight bicycle patrol shift ended Monday, when he responded to a report
of a shot fired in an inner city Manchester neighborhood. Hours after
Briggs' death Tuesday afternoon, Attorney General Kelly Ayotte announced her
intention to upgrade charges against Addison from attempted murder to
capital murder.

Addison, 26, was arrested Monday evening in Boston and remains jailed there
on $2 million bail.

New Hampshire's death penalty law includes a short list of crimes, including
murder of a law enforcement officer and murder during rape or attempted
rape. Additionally, the law requires two jury verdicts: one finding guilt,
and another imposing the penalty. The jury must unanimously find two
aggravating circumstances, including intent, for a death sentence. The state
Supreme Court automatically reviews death sentences.

The last person charged with capital murder in New Hampshire was Gordon
Perry, who avoided the possibility by pleading guilty to first-degree murder
in Epsom police Officer Jeremy Charron's death. Charron, who served with
Briggs on the Epsom force, was gunned down while checking a parked car in
August 1997.

Criminal defense lawyer Michael Ramsdell handled the Perry case when he was
chief of the state's homicide bureau.

"It's much more difficult than handling first- and second-degree murder
cases because there are so many more issues raised in death penalty cases,"
Ramsdell said. "The amount of resources that need to be devoted far exceed
any resources for any other kind of case."

Ramsdell also handled a 1988 case involving three men who faced capital
murder charges in the stabbing death of a pregnant woman. In that case, one
teen was acquitted and other was sentenced to 46 years to life in prison.
The husband was never tried because the teens refused to testify against
him.

He said a capital case in New Hampshire could take 10 years to complete
since the state has not gone through a trial or the appeals process.

Ramsdell wouldn't speculate on Addison's case. "Anybody who tells you he has
a gut feeling about the case . . . I would be very, very skeptical," he
said.

Democratic state Sen. Lou D'Allesandro, a death penalty advocate, believes
it is clearly warranted in Briggs's murder.

"I think the sentiment for this will be so strong given the circumstance
surrounding this murder," he said. "This was a deliberate act meant to kill
from everything I have gathered."

But Democratic state Rep. Jim Splaine, prime sponsor of recent repeal bills,
believes a jury would decide life without parole is a worse fate.

"It is not being easier on criminals. It is tougher," he said.

The issue will be on lawmakers' agenda again next year, though it isn't
likely to change anything.

Splaine said he has filed a new bill to repeal the death penalty, but both
Gov. John Lynch and Republican challenger Jim Coburn promise to veto any
such attempts.

Cushing's father was shotgunned in the doorway of his Hampton home in 1988
by the neighbor who also was a town police officer.

Would a New Hampshire jury sentence Addison to death given the state's
divisions over the death penalty?

"It's hard to say. That ends up being an individual decision a jury has to
weigh," Cushing said.  

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Source : The Associated Press