In the nearly 16 years since her daughter was murdered, Margaret Hawthorn never wished the same fate on her killer.
Sitting at the kitchen table of her serene home in Rindge, where large windows overlook a frozen pond and frame a snow-capped Mount Monadnock in the distance, Hawthorn pondered how she would feel if the state executed him for his crime.
She’d already lost her 31-year-old daughter, Molly MacDougall, a happily married nursing student at NHTI who loved to dance and make pottery and had a lively sense of humor. The man who killed her after she rejected his romantic advances is now serving a prison sentence of 45 years to life.
“The idea of another death is just jarring,” Hawthorn concluded. “It’s the only word I can think of.”
Hawthorn’s loss and the principles of her Quaker faith spurred her to advocate against the death penalty beginning in 2015, five years after Molly’s death. She wrote letters, testified at public hearings and spoke with lawmakers near the culmination of a decades-long push to end capital punishment in New Hampshire.
She remembers the atmosphere at the State House in 2019, when she watched on as legislators abolished the death penalty.
“Party time,” she said, laughing. “Just tears of joy.”
Last month, a handful of Republicans introduced legislation to restore the practice. Their efforts fizzled out on Thursday after widespread pushback and hours of public testimony.
The House of Representatives unceremoniously voted down four bills that would’ve reinstated capital punishment and expanded it to more types of crimes.
Although lawmakers only recently repealed the death penalty, no one has been executed in New Hampshire since 1939. About two dozen people have been executed in the state’s history, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.
Just one man, Michael Addison, currently sits on New Hampshire’s death row. Addison was sentenced to death in 2008 for killing Manchester police officer Michael Briggs.
Gov. Kelly Ayotte, who prosecuted that case, has expressed support for reinstating the death penalty, though she has not commented on any of the specific bills presented this year.
Some proponents have said they feel that victims’ families deserve the closure of seeing the death of the perpetrator; others say they don’t want their tax dollars going toward keeping a criminal alive in prison, though experts indicate that it often costs more to execute someone than imprison them for life.
For Hawthorn, learning that some lawmakers wanted to bring back the death penalty, including for charges of second-degree murder, brought feelings of anger and discouragement. So, she got back in the game.
Hawthorn told lawmakers at a public hearing last month that rather than see her daughter’s killer put to death, she wants him to have a chance at redemption, to see him make something better out of his life.
“Pie in the sky, maybe, but that hope gives me the inner peace that I need to get through the days without Molly,” she said. “An execution would eliminate any possibility of that turnaround. I don’t need him to die to allow me to live.”
State representatives ultimately respected Hawthorn’s wish, which she shares with the other family members of victims who testified. Rep. Terry Roy, the Deerfield Republican who chairs the House Criminal Justice and Public Safety Committee, wrote in a report that an “overwhelming” number of Granite Staters don’t want the death penalty.
Ahead of the House vote, his committee unanimously recommended that lawmakers veto the bills.
“While we would contend that the American system of justice is the best in the world, it is not perfect and it does make mistakes,” Roy wrote. “One of the things that makes our system great is its ability and willingness to rectify mistakes. A mistaken execution cannot be undone.”
Some lawmakers, however, expressed feeling that some crimes are too horrible for their perpetrators to be rehabilitated into society. Rep. Joe Sweeney, a Salem Republican, proposed a bill that would’ve made sexual assault offenses against minors under age 16 punishable by death. His bill was later amended to make those crimes felonies and exclude the death penalty.
“I think of the types of crimes in which rehabilitation works,” Sweeney said, referring to prison time, counseling, rehab and other parts of an individual’s transition out of incarceration. “And then I think of these crimes, and these crimes are not that.”
Rep. Mark Proulx, a Manchester Republican who sits on the criminal justice committee, used to feel similarly. After his brother-in-law was shot to death, he initially wanted the death penalty, even though it wasn’t an option in that case.
“I guess you just have that anger and that ‘what the heck’ kind of thing,” Proulx said.
At some point, his perspective shifted, even though he doesn’t remember consciously changing his mind. Listening to public testimony convinced him further in his decision to reject those bills.
“There are appeals forever,” he said, and more than 200 people sentenced to death in the past 50 years have been exonerated. “What if we’re wrong?”