A state senator and Attorney General Kelly Ayotte urged lawmakers yesterday to support a bill seeking to expand the state's narrow death penalty law to include murderers who kill multiple victims. Critics, meanwhile, challenged the proposal as immoral and expensive.

The bill would expand the state's number of death penalty cases considerably. Since 2003, there have been eight multiple-victim murders. Go back further, to 1996, and the number climbs to 18. By contrast, the state is currently prosecuting its first two death penalty cases since 1990, and the state hasn't executed anyone for nearly 80 years.

The bill's sponsor, Republican Sen. Joseph Kenney of Union, said his proposal is a response to this summer's triple killing at an Army-Navy store in Conway, for which Michael Woodbury of Maine is serving a life sentence without parole. Ayotte said the absence of a provision about multiple killings from the state's current death penalty law is a "glaring omission."

The state's existing law covers six types of murder: murder of a law enforcement or judicial officer; murder for hire; murder in prison while already serving a life sentence; and murders during a kidnapping, rape or drug sale.

"We have a narrow (death penalty) statute, and that is appropriate," Ayotte said. "But this should be covered."

Ayotte introduced an amendment to Kenney's bill that would include murderers who kill multiple people either at once or over a period of time.

A sister of one of the victims in the Conway case spoke in support of the bill. Jennifer Walker Blake, whose brother James Walker was killed, said Woodbury's prison sentence is better than he deserves, especially since it includes meals, shelter and other amenities. It's unfair, she said, that someone who kills three people gets the same sentence as someone who kills one person.

Kenney's bill drew more opponents than supporters yesterday. Three supported it; five didn't. It will likely face a tough fight on two grounds: moral and financial.

Church leaders and others argued the first point.

Diane Murphy Quinlan, chancellor of the Catholic diocese, said the use of capital punishment contributes to the culture of violence. "State-sanctioned killing in our name diminishes all of us," she said.

Renny Cushing of Hampton, the founder of Murder Victims' Families for Human Rights, said the state should be proud that it hasn't executed anyone for nearly 80 years.

"Killing murderers will not bring anyone back," said Cushing, whose father was murdered. "What it does is creates another grieving family."

Lawyer Michael Iacopino, president of the state's Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, focused his comments on the expense of expanding the death penalty law. He predicted the cost of prosecuting and defending 1.5 death penalty cases a year would cost New Hampshire at least $3 million.

The state did a similar analysis for the bill.

According to those figures, death penalty cases can cost between $750,000 and several million dollars to defend. And in most cases, the defendant cannot afford his or her own attorney and relies on one paid for by the state. Appeals can tack on between $25,000 and $100,000. And there are additional expenses to the court system and prison.

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