UL: Addison lawyers want jury back in court

Michael Addison’s defenders quickly questioned his capital murder sentence, given last month. They assert that the jury ignored the judge’s instructions for deliberation and based their decision not on fact but on emotional appeals to Addison’s perceived “lack of remorse.”

Read it here. Below is my “newspaper clipping,” as nothing lasts forever on the UL website:

By MARK HAYWARD
MANCHESTER – Defense lawyers yesterday asked a judge to call back the jury that sentenced Michael Addison to death, claiming jurors improperly based their verdict on Addison’s lack of remorse and his silence during the trial.

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

$978,000 allocated in death penalty case

The Union Leader article citing the amount spent to date on Addison’s death penalty case. Note that the amount was under $1 million, but could double or triple by the end of the case. The appeals process will certainly cost more over many years. By hearsay, this cost to persue the death penalty will be far greater than the cost of life in prison without parole.

Read it here. Full text below as nothing lives forever on the Union Leader site:

By KATHRYN MARCHOCKI
New Hampshire Union Leader Staff
Tuesday, Feb. 5, 2008

MANCHESTER – Nearly $978,000 has been allocated to date for the capital murder case against Michael K. “Stix” Addison and requests for more money likely will be made before Addison stands trial in September for allegedly killing a Manchester police officer, attorneys involved in the case said.

Addison, 27, pleaded innocent to shooting bicycle patrol officer Michael L. Briggs, 35, once in the head Oct. 16, 2006. Briggs died the next day. If convicted, Addison could face the death penalty.

The New Hampshire Public Defender Office, which represents Addison, will have spent about $530,000 in attorney salaries, investigators and office costs alone by the end of the fiscal year on June 30, the office’s executive director Christopher Keating said.

In addition, the court so far has approved another $27,935 for experts, forensic analysis and other special services for Addison’s defense, New Hampshire Judicial Council executive director Nina Gardner said.

Keating estimates this figure “could double or even triple” by the time Addison’s trial ends.

Meanwhile, the Attorney General’s Office has hired two attorneys, a paralegal and a part-time secretary and purchased computer software with the $420,000 a legislative fiscal committee gave it in October 2006 to cover the extra cost of prosecuting a capital murder case, Attorney General Kelly A. Ayotte said.

Her office so far has spent $270,714 from this fund and expects to ask the committee for more money before the case goes to trial, she said.

This does not include the cost of the multiple, salaried state prosecutors who have been preparing the case for trial and litigating numerous pre-trial issues, many related to defense challenges to the constitutionality of the state’s death penalty statute, Ayotte said. Many of these attorneys work on other cases and it’s difficult to track time spent exclusively on the capital murder case, she said.

“Certainly, this is an intense case,” Ayotte said. She estimated about eight lawyers work on the case at any one time.

“We pool our collective knowledge and experience on it,’” she explained.

The newly-hired attorneys are doing work that frees up more experienced homicide prosecutors to work full-time or devote most of their time to the Briggs’ case, she said.

In addition to state prosecutors, Hillsborough County attorneys have won two convictions against Addison in a shooting and armed robbery that occurred within days of Briggs’ murder. Addison will face trial in another armed hold up Feb. 19.

The county cases are directly related to the capital murder case because the state alleges they are aggravating factors that support its decision to seek the death penalty, Ayotte said.

Addison’s defense costs are being paid through the New Hampshire Judicial Fund, a state agency that handles all indigent defense costs and gets it funding from the state’s general fund, Gardner said. The agency funds the public defender office. It also funds all court-approved requests for other services, she said.

Addison’s fate: Find justice, not comparisons

From the Union Leader editorials, Sunday, November 16, 2008. The editorial argues that not only should Addison receive death, but Brooks ought also. 

Read it here. Full text below, as nothing lives forever on the Union Leader website:

On Thursday, a jury convicted Michael Addison of capital murder for the slaying two years ago of Manchester Police Officer Michael Briggs. Now comes the hard part. What punishment does he receive?

Justice demands one answer: death.

Addison killed not in haste, but with cold premeditation. A fugitive felon on a crime spree, Addison knew that apprehension would change his life forever. It would mean years and years behind bars. With the decision to kill any police officer who found him, he vowed that would never happen. Jurors in his sentencing trial should make sure it does not.

On its merits, this is not a difficult call. Addison followed through on a plan to murder a police officer. If that is not justification for capital punishment, nothing is.

But this decision is complicated by an outside factor. Shortly before Addison was found guilty of capital murder, Jay Brooks, convicted on Oct. 16 of two counts of capital murder, was sentenced to life in prison. Brooks is white, Addison black.

Already commentators are saying that Addison must not receive a death sentence. It would give the appearance that New Hampshire juries are racist, some say. In light of the Brooks verdict, it would be unjustifiable, others argue.

Those arguments are unsound. What was unjustifiable was the jury’s decision to give Brooks life.

The question is whether that injustice is reason to commit a second. It is not.

The Addison jury must weigh nothing but the factors directly relevant to his case. The Brooks verdict is not among them.

Addison intentionally murdered a police officer.

Relaxing his punishment because of his skin color or because a separate jury failed to do its duty in a separate case would be to commit a gross injustice. Michael Briggs’ family deserves better than that. The people of Manchester deserve better than that.