Letter to the Editor re Brooks and Addison sentences

Dear Editor:

On Feb. 5 2008, the Union Leader reported that the state allocated
$978,000 for the attorney general to push for a death sentence for
Michael Addison. One person then estimated that this figure “could
double or even triple” by the end of his trial. Now that we have spent
our millions on this trial and will soon spend millions more on
appeals, I wonder how much our state allocated for the capital murder
trial of John Brooks.

This example of disparity has many American precedents. Before Brown
v. Board of Education, by-law segregation weakened our schools. These
many years later, we still bear the scars on our common past that
race-based unequal spending has left. In the light of the Brooks and
Addison sentences, we in New Hampshire have chosen painfully old
wounds over healing in our intention to keep the justice system
separate but equal.

Yours by grace,
The Rev. Jason Wells