This story was originally produced by the New Hampshire Bulletin, an independent local newsroom that allows NHPR and other outlets to republish its reporting.
After a man fatally shot his estranged wife in Berlin last year, the New Hampshire judicial branch was among many entities calling for changes.
The courts and police could have stopped Michael Gleason from killing Marisol Fuentes-Huaracha had they enforced a domestic violence protective order requiring Gleason to give up his firearms, the branch’s Internal Review Committee wrote in an August report.
And officers could have better enforced that order had there been clearer processes to take away those firearms, the committee wrote.
“Ultimately, legislative changes may be necessary to adequately address the issue of effective firearm relinquishment,” the report stated.
A year later, lawmakers have been lukewarm on those recommendations. House Republicans have criticized two bills intended to penalize people who fail to turn over firearms when ordered to do so by a court.
House Bill 1454, a bipartisan bill, would make it a Class A misdemeanor for someone to possess a firearm in violation of a court order requiring them to surrender all weapons, and a Class B felony for a second offense. It would also require that that person be held without bail if arrested for possessing firearms in violation of a domestic violence protective order.
And House Bill 1084, a Democratic bill, would require all people served with a domestic violence protective order to relinquish their firearms — removing the discretion of a judge. It also would require that to be done immediately, and that courts issue search warrants of the defendant’s house, property, and vehicles.
The House tabled HB 1454 on March 5. And HB 1084 died Thursday when the House failed to take it up for a vote before a crucial deadline. The Criminal Justice and Public Safety Committee recommended it be killed.
Both bills would have addressed specific conditions leading up to Fuentes-Huaracha’s murder.
Fuentes-Huaracha had obtained four protective orders against Gleason that required him to relinquish firearms, yet despite multiple visits by local police, he had not done so, the judicial branch review found. And after Gleason was arrested for felonious sexual assault and released on bail, a circuit court judge declined to revoke that bail later, despite evidence of a troubling pattern of behavior.
The votes suggest that the Fuentes-Huaracha tragedy has not overpowered longstanding skepticism in the Republican-led Legislature toward bills that deprive people of firearms. Instead, the House has prioritized legislation to help domestic violence victims that does not affect firearms.
Addressing HB 1454, Rep. Terry Roy, a Deerfield Republican, called the effort “both redundant and constitutionally problematic.”
He argued that current state law, RSA 173-B:9, allows for police to arrest a person who disobeys a firearms relinquishment order and charge them with a Class A misdemeanor. And he said that the current system allows judges to decide themselves whether to approve extra penalties related to firearm possession, whether in the protective order or in a contempt of court ruling.
“Creating a separate, additional criminal offense for the same underlying act constitutes unnecessary ‘statutory stacking’ that complicates the criminal code without providing a practical increase in safety,” Roy wrote in the House calendar.
Lawmakers have advanced domestic violence prevention legislation that does not involve firearms restrictions. On Wednesday, the House passed a bill to try to speed up the process by which a court considers revoking a person’s bail in domestic violence cases.
House Bill 1637 would require a court to schedule a hearing within 72 hours of receiving a motion by prosecutors or a victim asking for bail to be revoked. The bill would apply that 72-hour requirement specifically to bail orders related to domestic violence, stalking, and harassment cases. For other bail revocation motions, the court would be required to schedule a hearing “promptly,” following the current law.
The House also passed a bill dramatically expanding the definition of domestic abuse to include nonconsensual dissemination of private sexual images and “coercive control.”
House Bill 1522, a bipartisan bill that passed the House by voice vote, defines coercive control as behavior that includes isolating a person from friends and relatives; controlling or monitoring a person’s finances, movements, and communications; compelling a person to engage in activity; threatening to publish sensitive information about a person; or threatening to harm or harming a child, relative, or pet of a person. Advocates for domestic violence victims have long pushed for such behavior to be added to the statute.
Rep. Alissandra Murray, a Manchester Democrat, said the bill seeks to recognize “that domestic violence is often a pattern of behavior that includes threatening, humiliating, or intimidating actions designed to isolate a person and restrict their freedom.”
Meanwhile, the Department of Safety has continued work on another major recommendation of the Fuentes situation: improving information sharing between police departments related to bail orders.
On Feb. 11, the Executive Council approved a contract that expanded the State Police Online Telecommunications System to include a “bail notification system.” The current system, SPOTS, has long allowed for the transfer of criminal justice information between state and local police agencies. But the update will allow law enforcement in the field to see real-time information about a person’s bail status without needing to call a separate agency or court, according to the department.
“(This) will increase public safety,” said Department of Safety Commissioner Robert Quinn at the Council meeting. “Law enforcement out there knowing when they stop someone that he or she is” in the bail database.
While Republicans have struck down domestic violence legislation aimed at firearms, Democrats argue restricting lethal weapons is critical.
Rep. David Meuse, a Portsmouth Democrat, called domestic violence New Hampshire’s leading cause of homicide. A 2021 report from the New Hampshire Domestic Violence Fatality Review Committee found that 59% of the state’s homicides between 2020 and 2021 involved domestic violence.
“This bill would make it far less attractive for a person ordered to surrender their weapons in a domestic violence protective order to continue to possess those weapons after an order has been issued,” Meuse said on the House floor, speaking on HB 1494.
