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Thread: New Hampshire Aggravating Factors For Capital Punishment

  1. #1
    Administrator Heidi's Avatar
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    New Hampshire Aggravating Factors For Capital Punishment

    (1)The murder was especially heinous, atrocious, cruel or depraved (or involved torture)
    (2) The defendant knowingly created a grave risk of death for one or more persons in addition to the victim of the offense
    (3) The defendant committed the murder after substantial planning and premeditation
    (4)The defendant purposely killed the victim
    (5) The murder was committed for pecuniary gain or pursuant to an agreement that the defendant would receive something of value
    (6) The murder was committed to avoid or prevent arrest, to effect an escape, or to conceal the commission of a crime
    (7) The defendant has been convicted of, or committed, a prior murder, a felony involving violence, or other serious felony
    (8)The defendant has previously been convicted of 2 or more state or federal offenses punishable by a term of imprisonment of more than one year, committed on different occasions, involving the distribution of a controlled substance
    (9)The victim was particularly vulnerable due to old age, youth, or infirmity

  2. #2
    Senior Member Frequent Poster Steven AB's Avatar
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    When the death penalty statute was repealed in 2019, the list of aggravating factors was the following:

    (1) The victim was a sheriff or deputy sheriff, state trooper, constable or police officer of a city or town, correctional officer, probation-parole officer, conservation officer, judge or similar person, state or local prosecutor, murdered while acting in the line of duty or in retaliation for their job.

    (2) Murder while engaged or attempting to commit a kidnapping.

    (3) Contract killing.

    (4) Murder after being sentenced to life imprisonment without parole.

    (5) Murder involving aggravated felonious sexual assault.

    (6) Drug-related murder.

    (7) Robbery-murder.

    The first post incorrect list was probably copied from another site, likely the DPIC which at the time was grossly inaccurate even on this purely factual matter.
    "If ever there were a case for a referendum, this is one on which the people should be allowed to express their own views and not irresponsible votes in the House of Commons." — Winston Churchill, on the death penalty

    The self-styled "Death Penalty Information Center" is financed by the oligarchic European Union. — The Daily Signal

  3. #3
    Senior Member Frequent Poster Steven AB's Avatar
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    We can have endless discussions about each aggravating factor and whether it should qualify to make a murder punishable by death.

    But there is something certain, it is that there are at least three factors that should always be in the statute:

    – Multiple murders, including previous convictions.

    – Murder involving rape or torture of the victim.

    – Murder of a child.

    The New Hampshire statute lacked two and a half of these three circumstances despite being likely the most restrictive statute nationwide. This was one of the worst examples of a problem existing in many death penalty state laws.

    As early as 2011, New Hampshire added robbery-murder, the crime for which public support for the death penalty is the lowest according to the 2019 Bessette-Sinclair study, especially compared to the three above-listed.

    http://www.cncpunishment.com/forums/...998#post139998

    And this result was easily predictable even before conducting a formal study to prove it.

    Imagine indeed if all post-Furman statutes had provided these three factors, and almost no other. If all of those sentenced to death and executed since then had been so only for such crimes. The abolitionist narrative would have been much less seductive.

    Moreover, some states have so many death row inmates and are unlikely to ever execute all of them, better focus on the gravest cases.

    When William Barr scheduled and conducted federal executions in 2019-2021, he overtly chose to begin with those whose crimes were the most heinous "rather than those who had been on death row longest". That was the best choice.

    The repeal of the capital punishment statute in New Hampshire had little impact because they were not going to carry out a lot of executions, to put it mildly. And this repeal offers the advantage of a future reinstatement, which would be the occasion to do a better drafting job, with the three above-mentioned factors, and no supplemental condition required for capital eligibility (such as premeditation, future dangerousness, or requiring that two murders are committed at a same moment or pursuant to a same scheme of conduct).
    Last edited by Steven AB; 10-31-2023 at 01:20 PM.
    "If ever there were a case for a referendum, this is one on which the people should be allowed to express their own views and not irresponsible votes in the House of Commons." — Winston Churchill, on the death penalty

    The self-styled "Death Penalty Information Center" is financed by the oligarchic European Union. — The Daily Signal

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