New Hampshire court upholds death penalty for state’s only death row inmate

Michael Addison was sentenced to death in 2008 for shooting and killing a police officer. New Hampshire repealed the death penalty 11 years later.(CN) — New Hampshire’s high court on Tuesday rejected a bid from a convicted cop killer to review his death sentence, finding the punishment was imposed lawfully since it came years before the state repealed capital punishment.Michael Addison, now 46, is New Hampshire’s last death row inmate. He fatally shot Manchester Police Officer Michael Briggs in 2006 and was sentenced to death for the killing in 2008. But New Hampshire abolished the death penalty in 2019 over ethical and equity concerns, which Addison argued in court filings should render his sentence unconstitutional.The New Hampshire Supreme Court disagreed, ruling Tuesday that the state legislature explicitly outlined that the death penalty repeal “shall apply to persons convicted of capital murder on or after the effective date” of the 2019 law.Addison was the only person that language would have applied to — at the time, he was the only one in the state sentenced to capital punishment.“The petitioner was convicted of capital murder before the effective date of the act, and the repeal therefore does not apply to him,” wrote New Hampshire Supreme Court Justice Melissa Countway in a six-page ruling. New Hampshire Supreme Court Justices Patrick Donovan and Bryan Gould concurred.The judges also found that, pursuant to state law, Addison’s sentence was automatically reviewed by the court once before. Allowing him to seek an additional reexamination could potentially open the door to limitless appeals.Doing so, they said, “would conflict with the purpose of requiring this court to prioritize our mandatory appellate review of all other cases — that being, to expedite our review — if, after we have done so, the parties could simply request more of the same reviews.”In a statement to Courthouse News, Addison’s lawyer Jonathan Cohen said he is disappointed with the court’s decision.“We continue to believe that the law compellingly supports the conclusion that in the wake of New Hampshire’s repeal of the death penalty, Mr. Addison’s death sentence cannot stand,” he said.Addison received support from the American Civil Liberties Union, which filed amicus curiae briefs with the court in support of a sentencing review. The group argued that going through with Addison’s execution would make New Hampshire the only state in the country to execute someone under a repealed death penalty statute.Additionally, the ACLU suggested that racial bias played a role in the sentencing. Addison, who is Black, was sentenced the same year as John Brooks, a wealthy white New Hampshire businessman who beat a handyman to death with a sledgehammer and received a life sentence instead of capital punishment.“It is extremely disappointing that the court did not take this opportunity to address the disproportionate and inequitable death sentence imposed on Mr. Addison, the only person on New Hampshire’s death row and a Black man,” Megan Byrne, senior staff attorney at the ACLU’s Capital Punishment Project, said in a statement Tuesday. “New Hampshire repealed the death penalty in 2019 because it recognized that the punishment is unjust, inhumane and infected with racial bias. Mr. Addison’s case puts those very problems on full display. New Hampshire should not move backward by defending a sentence under a law it has already rejected.”The case isn’t over. Addison is currently awaiting a ruling on another appeal of his sentence in the Merrimack County Superior Court that could halt his execution.New Hampshire’s governor, Republican Kelly Ayotte, believes Addison should still be put to death, however. Once the state’s attorney general, she was also the lead prosecutor in Addison’s murder case.“Addison’s sentence was handed down fairly and in accordance with the law by a jury of his peers, and today’s ruling by the New Hampshire Supreme Court is an important step toward ensuring justice for Officer Briggs, the Briggs family, and the men and women of the Manchester Police Department,” she said in a statement.The death penalty is facing renewed national scrutiny after Tennessee’s botched execution of Christa Pike, a 50-year-old murder convict who survived two doses of pentobarbital last week and is now in critical condition.She would have been the first woman to be executed in Tennessee in more than two centuries, but is now the state’s second botched death penalty attempt in about six months.Subscribe to our free newslettersOur weekly newsletter Closing Arguments offers the latest about ongoing trials, major litigation and rulings in courthouses around the U.S. and the world, while the monthly Under the Lights dishes the legal dirt from Hollywood, sports, Big Tech and the arts.Additional Reads