The New Hampshire Supreme Court on Oct. 6 dismissed Michael Addison's request for a new review of his death sentence, ruling that state law lets the court compare a death sentence with the penalties in similar cases only once. Addison, sentenced to death in 2008 for killing Manchester police Officer Michael L. Briggs, had argued that the state's 2019 repeal of capital punishment entitled him to a fresh comparison.
"The constitutionality of the statute is not before us. The sole issue before us is one of statutory interpretation," the court wrote. Addison's separate claim that the repeal makes his death sentence unconstitutional is still pending in superior court, along with the prison warden's motion to dismiss it.
In 2015, the court completed the review the capital sentencing law requires and found Addison's sentence was not excessive or disproportionate. The Legislature repealed the death penalty in 2019 but wrote that the repeal "shall apply to persons convicted of capital murder on or after the effective date of this act." Addison raised the repeal in his superior court habeas case in 2020, and that court waited for the Supreme Court to decide whether the law allows a second review.
Justice Melissa B. Countway wrote the opinion, joined by Senior Associate Justice Patrick E. Donovan and Justice Bryan K. Gould. The law calls for an "automatic review" on a fixed deadline that takes "priority over all other cases," she wrote, and those requirements "are not consistent with permitting successive comparative proportionality reviews, at the request of parties or otherwise." Because Addison was convicted before the repeal took effect, the court said, the repeal "does not apply to him." "If the legislature intended to provide successive comparative proportionality reviews for defendants convicted of capital murder and sentenced to death prior to the effective date of the act repealing the death penalty, it could have included that in the legislation, but it did not," Countway wrote.
Addison's lawyers said in a statement reported by The Boston Globe that they "continue to believe that the law compellingly supports the conclusion that in the wake of New Hampshire's repeal of the death penalty, Mr. Addison's death sentence cannot stand." Attorney General John M. Formella said the decision "marks an important step in the ongoing post-conviction process," the Globe reported.
Under the court's rules, either side may ask the justices to rehear the case within 10 days of the opinion, or by Oct. 16.
Sources:
Petition of Addison, 2026 N.H. 37, New Hampshire Supreme Court opinion, Oct. 6, 2026
State v. Addison (Capital Murder), 165 N.H. 381 (2013); State v. Addison (Capital Murder - Proportionality Review), 167 N.H. 562 (2015). Also reported by