Minutes after N.H. abolished the death penalty, Rep. Renny Cushing reflects on the many efforts he’s made to repeal statute – to replace the penalty with life in prison without chance of parole. Photo by Dan Tuohy for NHPR
The New Hampshire Legislature has banned capital punishment, overturning the veto of Republican Gov. Chris Sununu. The outcome was narrow but anticipated. And, for opponents of the death penalty, it was a long time coming.
Opponents of capital punishment cheered from the Senate gallery when the override vote was tallied. They hugged and they cried. And worked to put the demise of the death penalty into perspective. Hampton Democrat Rep. Renny Cushing had sponsored repeal bills unsuccessfully for years. Until now.
“There is a Seamus Heaney poem that talks about moments when hope and history rhyme, and for me this is one of those moments when hope and history rhyme,” he said after the Senate vote.
The override cleared the Senate by precisely the two-thirds margin required. The debate was short, and at times sharp. Senator Sharon Carson, a Republican from Londonderry, offered a lengthy argument against repealing the death penalty.
“This is not Louisiana of the 1920s, where Old Sparky was put up on a flatbed truck and driven around from prison to prison and people were executed,” she said. “We are not those people.”
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