O P I N I O N

THE SOAPBOX

Stand up. Speak up. It’s your turn.

Bringing back the death penalty is not justice, it’s the ultimate form of slavery. It is inhumane to believe that taking another life restores safety or peace. The New Hampshire legislature repealed the death penalty in 2019 by a bipartisan, two-thirds majority. Since then, there has been no rise in homicide. In fact, New Hampshire has the lowest homicide rate in the nation.

The death penalty has no proven value in keeping communities safe. Instead, it wastes resources that could be used for prevention, rehabilitation, and healing principles that reflect New Hampshire’s Bill of Rights, Article 18, which reminds us that the true purpose of punishment is to reform, not destroy. Justice should repair harm, not repeat it.

Our criminal justice system is not perfect. As history proves, the risk of killing an innocent person is real. Since 1973, more than 200 people in the U.S. who were wrongly convicted and sentenced to death were later exonerated. How can a system capable of error be trusted with irreversible punishment?

Moreover, the death penalty discriminates against poor people and people of color. It offers no greater protection to society than life imprisonment without parole. It violates the moral teachings of most faiths. And, finally, many who have lost loved ones to violence oppose the death penalty.

New Hampshire has not executed anyone since 1939 – there’s no reason to return to such cruelty. True justice is about restoration, not retribution.

RELATED: Text of NH HB 1413: “Reinstituting the death penalty in cases of capital murder.”

Ophelia Burnett is a Healing Justice Program Associate with the American Friends Service Committee and founder of O So Beautiful Reentry: The Women’s Initiative, for women returning home from incarceration.