Months after a New Hampshire jury sentenced a man to death for the first time in a half century, the House voted yesterday to repeal the state's death penalty law.

Gov. John Lynch swiftly vowed to veto the bill and uphold the state's death penalty, telling reporters he believes "there are some crimes so heinous that capital punishment is warranted. If a bill to repeal capital punishment reaches my desk, I will veto that bill."

The surprise 193-174 House vote marked the second time in a decade that state legislators have backed a repeal of the death penalty; in 2000, then-Gov. Jeanne Shaheen vetoed a repeal bill with a statement now echoed by Lynch: that some murders are "so heinous that the death penalty is an appropriate punishment."

Hampton Rep. Renny Cushing led the charge for repeal yesterday, telling a hushed House about the aftermath of the 1988 murder of his own father, who was gunned down at his front door by a neighbor. The Democrat described calling his six siblings from the hospital, being unable to hold a prompt funeral because his father's body "had become a piece of evidence" and struggling over how to clean his father's blood from his boyhood home's floor.

But, he said, he remained opposed to the death penalty, saying that changing his position on that would mean surrendering more power to killers.

"Not only would my father be taken from me, but so would my values," said Cushing, the co-founder of Murder Victims' Families for Human Rights. "If we let those who kill make us into killers, then evil triumphs and we all lose."

Making the case for the death penalty, Rep. Stanley Stevens described New Hampshire's death penalty as a "tight law." The law allows prosecutors to seek the penalty only in murder cases where the victim is an on-duty law enforcement officer or a judge, if the murder is committed during a rape or kidnapping, or if the crime was a murder for hire.

Stevens, a Wolfeboro Republican, said the repeal effort was ill-timed, and he noted that the House had earlier passed a bill that would create a special commission to conduct a study of the state's death penalty, including its effectiveness and scope.

"I think they should have time to work," Stevens said.

Stevens also took time to review the two recent death-penalty cases New Hampshire has seen over the past year. In November, a jury decided to spare Manchester millionaire John Brooks, sentencing him to life in prison instead of death for hiring others to help him murder a man who once did work for him. The next month, a jury sentenced Michael Addison to death for the 2006 murder of Manchester police Officer Michael Briggs.

Addison's sentence was thoroughly considered by a jury that weighed his prior criminal record, Stevens said, mistakenly swapping the names of Addison and Briggs.

"(Addison) had a record that's about as long as your arm," said Stevens, the only death-penalty advocate who made remarks during the debate. "This is a young man, and he had a horrible record."

Addison's case is now in the appeals process. Even if the repeal bill became law, it would not change his sentence.

Death penalty opponents made a variety of arguments for repeal. The bill's sponsor, Claremont Rep. Steven Lindsey, argued that people are fallible and cannot be trusted to administer a penalty as final as death.

Milton Rep. Larry Brown, a Democrat, also spoke against the penalty - though, he said, he's "not a charitable person" or a religious one. Brown picked up an hourglass - left on the podium by House Speaker Terie Norelli to encourage debaters to be brief - and laid it on its side to describe his concept of a proper punishment for a criminal.

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