‘Attack on the rule of law’: State defends death sentence for inmate who killed police officer

Michael Addison was sentenced to death for killing a Manchester police officer two decades ago. If he committed the same crime today, he would not face execution in New Hampshire, his lawyers argued to the state Supreme Court.

That shift in state law sits at the center of this legal battle. 

After the state abolished the death penalty in 2019, Addison, New Hampshire’s only death row inmate, is arguing that his sentence should be commuted.

One of his attorneys, Michael Wiseman, told Supreme Court justices on Thursday that while Addison’s crime was serious, the punishment no longer aligns with current law or the state’s evolving “standards of decency.”

“Nobody in this country, in the history of the nation, has ever been put to death under the repeal statute,” Wiseman said. “This court should not be the first to allow that to happen.”

A ‘political accommodation’

When lawmakers repealed the death penalty, however, they included a specific carve-out that kept Addison’s sentence intact. 

Wiseman called it a “political accommodation.”

Governor Kelly Ayotte, who served as attorney general and prosecuted Addison’s case personally, has remained a strong opponent of his appeal and has voiced support for reinstating the death penalty.

Attorneys for Addison note in court filings the concerns Ayotte raised when the lawmakers took up the repeal in 2019.

“If you repeal the death penalty, I want you to understand that Michael Addison’s sentence will be commuted to life without parole,” attorneys wrote in the filing, quoting Ayotte’s remarks at a House committee hearing.

Addison’s attorneys asked the court to consider whether his sentence is now disproportionate, despite the legislative intent to keep him on death row.

“He stands out as a sore thumb now,” Wiseman said. “That thumb is only going to get more and more swollen as time passes.”

In 2006, Addison shot and killed Manchester Police Officer Michael Briggs, 35, who was responding to a domestic disturbance in the last 15 minutes of his shift.

In 2008, a jury convicted Addison of capital murder for knowingly killing a law enforcement officer acting in the line of duty and sentenced him to death.

Assistant Attorney General Audriana Mekula said the question before the court was not whether someone who committed the same crime today would face the death penalty, but whether Addison’s sentence, compared to other individuals convicted of the same crime with similar backgrounds, was fairly imposed.

In 2015, a jury concluded that Addison’s sentence was neither excessive nor disproportionate.

Mekula argued that it reflects how seriously juries across the country view the crime. 

Killing a law enforcement officer in the line of duty, she said, is “an attack on the rule of law.”

“This death sentence is not aberrational or excessive compared to what other states are doing in other places,” Mekula said. 

This year, the New Hampshire House of Representatives rejected a bill that would have reinstated the death penalty. 

But, Mekula noted that, despite the bill’s failure, it remains entirely possible for the legislature to bring back capital punishment in the future.

“New Hampshire has spoken clearly that it no longer believes that the death penalty is appropriate,” Wiseman countered. “I don’t even know how to respond to the possibility conceptually or academically, what if there’s a new death penalty?”

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