NH's Death Penalty to include a firing squad!?

[leetninja]

CONCORD, N.H. -- A Keene, N.H., lawmaker wants to expand New Hampshire's death penalty to include more crimes and make death by a firing squad the punishment in some cases.

The current law includes the murder of judges and law enforcement officials, as well as murder for hire, murder connected to certain drug offenses and murder during a rape. But Rep. Delmar Burridge, a Democrat, also wants to include murder during a robbery or other felony using a gun.

Under the bill he has sponsored, anyone convicted under that expansion would face a firing squad instead of lethal injection. He said threatening would-be murderers with a firing squad would be a more effective deterrent.

via: http://www.wmur.com/news/18564419/detail.html

i like the idea but i dont like that they seem to value Kops "officials" and "Judges" above civilians.  We are all people ...

[Ogre]

Ah, but some are more "people" than other people. 

[KBCraig]

Disclaimer: I haven't read the bill, nor any of the author's statements about it.

I suspect that this is like the congressman from New York who introduces a bill every year to make the draft active and mandatory with no exceptions: he opposes the draft, and he figures the best way to stop it is to draft the sons and daughters of the rich and powerful and politically connected.

If you want to stop the death penalty in NH, a good way would be to make the means of execution so objectionable that there would be a great public outcry to stop it.

Again: I don't know that it's the author's goal, but if it is, he'd got good strategy.

[J’raxis 270145]

Disclaimer: I haven't read the bill, nor any of the author's statements about it.

I suspect that this is like the congressman from New York who introduces a bill every year to make the draft active and mandatory with no exceptions: he opposes the draft, and he figures the best way to stop it is to draft the sons and daughters of the rich and powerful and politically connected.

If you want to stop the death penalty in NH, a good way would be to make the means of execution so objectionable that there would be a great public outcry to stop it.

Again: I don't know that it's the author's goal, but if it is, he'd got good strategy.

No, Delmar's just a fool. His testimony went on for fifteen minutes and yet he barely talked about the bill. Got quite a few good laughs, mostly at his expense, though. No one else testified in favor of the bill.

Although, another rep on the Committee, Robertson, who's very anti–death penalty, brought up this strategy as a way of killing the death penalty as a whole.

[error]

Delmar Burridge is STILL in Concord?!

[J’raxis 270145]

Delmar Burridge is STILL in Concord?!

Somehow.

Of course, having a rambling, incompetent fool like Delmar being on the side of authoritarianism is probably a good thing. He does a fine job of making everything he stands for sound foolish.

[Jim Johnson]

The CCRC (Cheshire County Republican Committee) sent me this ridiculous E-mail.


Juliana and all,

Burridge has sponsored a wagon load of bills.  Check him out on nh.gov.  Go to nh.gov, legislative branch, house, find your legislator, house roster and scroll down th Burridge.  When you bring up his name and addresses, etc., you will be able to click on "bills sponsored".  There you will bring up all his current bills.  He is not taken very seriously in most cases.  He shoots for the sensational; for instance, his bill related to having a firing squad perform executions.  His madness to his method may be to get the publicity.  He and Steve Lindsey are doing well with the press!  I expect his income tax bills to be thoroughly dissected and extinguished quickly by the seasoned political financial representatives, both parties.

Jane B. Johnson

[Tom Sawyer]

Jane B. Johnson

A relative of yours no doubt.

[Jim Johnson]

I don't want to get off the subject of, "What a Dickhead Burridge Is", but...

Johnsons are pretty lame at naming their children.

I've met several John Johnsons... that's a stretch... (Wife)"Hey Honey?  I need a name that illiterates with Johnson."  (Husband)"I don't know... John?"

I feel sorry for that guy Johnson Johnson.  He probably went through life going, "Yea... Johnson and Johnson... " at least he got a company deal.

That chick Jane B. Johnson... you know she went through High School as Jane BJ. 

[rakovsky]

New Hampshire uses hanging if for some reason lethal injection cannot be given. In other words the hangmen justify themselves with a bureaucratic mistake so they can slowly strangle people when (A) they make a mistake with their injections, and (B) they make a mistake with their long drop hangings.

Hanging is a disgusting way to kill someone. That is how Hitler killed his opponents. He slowly hanged them with piano wire and watched it as a movie. That is disgusting. Hanging anyone is cruel, unusual, and disgusting punishment. Can't you live up to Stalin's standards and shoot criminals in the head?

In England, the nobles got their heads chopped off. France invented the guillotine as a way to show equality and compassion. It is 2009 and America, Iran, and New Hampshire can't figure out that hanging is cruel, unusual, and disgusting.

[Giggan]

Interesting bump...

Hanging isn't on the books as the method of execution in NH. Despite this, a bunch of people think that it is. Lethal injection is the statutory method of execution in NH. I'm either too lazy or don't care enough to spend time on the State's site looking for the legal ramblings on the subject.

Also, I'm pretty sure there was a supreme court case regarding hanging and ruled it un-8th Amendmentable.

[Pat McCotter]

RSA 630:5 Procedure in Capital Murder.

XIV. The commissioner of corrections or his designee shall determine the substance or substances to be used and the procedures to be used in any execution, provided, however, that if for any reason the commissioner finds it to be impractical to carry out the punishment of death by administration of the required lethal substance or substances, the sentence of death may be carried out by hanging under the provisions of law for the death penalty by hanging in effect on December 31, 1986.

[Fluff and Stuff]

Interesting.  Expanding the death penalty would be a good way to encourage the NH government to pass a state income tax.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20091020/ts_alt_afp/usexecutionjustice

[MaineShark]

New Hampshire uses hanging if for some reason lethal injection cannot be given.

New Hampshire doesn't use any sort of capital punishment.  It's available, which certainly should be changed (except when administered by the intended victim, at the time of the attack - ie, self-defense) but, last I heard, it's been quite a long time since anyone was executed in NH.

In other words the hangmen justify themselves with a bureaucratic mistake so they can slowly strangle people when (A) they make a mistake with their injections, and (B) they make a mistake with their long drop hangings.

Hanging is a disgusting way to kill someone. That is how Hitler killed his opponents. He slowly hanged them with piano wire and watched it as a movie. That is disgusting. Hanging anyone is cruel, unusual, and disgusting punishment. Can't you live up to Stalin's standards and shoot criminals in the head?

Done correctly, hanging does not strangle anyone.  To strangle someone by hanging, you would lift them up by the noose, or drop them a very short distance.  "Short drop" hanging was abandoned as an official method of execution in the US nearly a century and a half ago.  The purpose of the drop in a "proper" hanging is to snap the spine and sever the brainstem, which instantly causes at least paralysis and unconsciousness, and more than likely instant death (not that it matters to the condemned whether death is instantaneous, since he's completely unconscious through any slight delay).

Lethal injection, on the other hand, can induce slow chemical strangulation, if the first drug does not properly induce a coma.

Shooting someone in the head, or otherwise destroying the brain, itself, would be the only "human" method of execution, but it is not allowed in the US.  It would be easier (and morally better) to end execution, altogether, so there would be no reason to push for adding that to the list of approved methods.

Joe

[Pat McCotter]

New Hampshire uses hanging if for some reason lethal injection cannot be given.

New Hampshire doesn't use any sort of capital punishment.  It's available, which certainly should be changed (except when administered by the intended victim, at the time of the attack - ie, self-defense) but, last I heard, it's been quite a long time since anyone was executed in NH.

    * In 1939, Howard Long was the last person to be executed by the State of New Hampshire. A storekeeper from Alton, Howard Long was hanged at the New Hampshire State Prison in Concord on July 14, 1939, for molesting and fatally beating a 10-year-old Laconia boy named Mark Neville Jensen.

    * In 1942, Ralph Jennings, was sentenced to be hanged for the murder of a New Jersey schoolteacher. Jennings hanged himself in his cell with his bedsheets, foiling the state's plan to execute him.

Michael "Stix" Addison was sentenced in December 2008 for knowingly causing the death of Manchester Police Officer Michael L. Briggs. He is the only person currently on death row in New Hampshire.