New Hampshire lawmakers will meet Wednesday to decide whether to override 31 vetoes from Gov. Kelly Ayotte.
One vetoed bill would remove the state’s three-year deadline for people convicted of a crime to request a new trial if there is new evidence.
A bipartisan group of lawmakers and the New England Innocence Project say that change would make it easier for wrongfully-convicted people to prove their innocence, but Ayotte wrote in her veto statement that there are already ways for defendants to seek a new trial and the bill isn’t necessary.
It’s the third year in a row that lawmakers and advocates have tried to pass a similar bill.
Cynthia Mousseau is an attorney at the New England Innocence Project, where she works to overturn wrongful convictions. She spoke with NHPR’s Morning Edition host Rick Ganley about what the exoneration process looks like in the state right now, and why she believes getting rid of the three-year limit for new trial requests is necessary.
Takeaways:
- There are currently three pathways to exonerate an incarcerated person in New Hampshire: habeas corpus petition, DNA testing petition and new trial motions.
- All have limitations, Mousseau says. She says existing laws leave out cases where new evidence of innocence emerges after three years.
- New Hampshire is one of three states in the country with an absolute time limit on a motion for a new trial.
- New Hampshire has only had three exonerations, the lowest number in the country, since tracking began in 1989.
This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
Transcript
Can you walk us through the existing exoneration process? What do people do when they believe that they've been wrongfully convicted? And where does this bill fit into that?
Immediately after your conviction, you have three pathways besides a direct appeal, which is when you appeal to the New Hampshire Supreme Court to access the court system. You can file a DNA petition; you can file a habeas corpus petition; or you can file a motion for a new trial. So many cases that we have don't involve DNA or so many cases don't have constitutional violations, which is what's required for a habeas corpus petition.
So cases with new evidence or new science or new scientific understanding are sort of left out for the new trial statute to pick up. The problem with the new trial statute right now is that it's limited to only three years. For cases where we get that evidence in year four or year five or year 10, or the science changes in that time, those people really can't access the court system anymore. This new bill is meant to allow access to the court system for those folks that don't have access right now.
So right now, if someone in prison who believes they were wrongfully convicted has new evidence of another person confessing to the crime, for instance, if they were convicted over three years ago, they can't request a new trial.
That's exactly right. We had a case that was very similar to this in Rhode Island. Scott Hornoff, who was a police officer, was convicted for a murder. He had been incarcerated for a number of years when another person confessed to that offense about six years in.
If that case had come to New Hampshire, there's no guarantee that Scott would have been able to access the court. Because that's not a constitutional violation, because nobody was responsible for knowing that beforehand, and it's not DNA. Those paths wouldn't have worked for Scott; it would have only had to been the new trial statute. And because it was six years after his conviction, he would have been out of luck.
Luckily, in Rhode Island, he wasn't, and he was able to access the court and be exonerated. But Scott's case would have fallen through the cracks here in New Hampshire.
Opponents of the bill also argue that it would lead to frivolous petitions and appeals. Is that a concern?
I think there's a prevailing theory that everyone in prison maintains their innocence. And I just want to say that I was a public defender for years, and this is absolutely incorrect. The actual reality is most folks in prison accept that they are guilty, and they know that and they've either pled out or been convicted and and they go in and do their sentences.
The number of cases that are going to change when it's six years . . . it's not reality. That hasn't been the case in other states that have opened up their time limits. This does not open the door to any legal challenges. This doesn't open the door to saying, “Hey, this warrant was bad” or “This isn't fair because of some legal issue.” We're only talking about factual innocence. That's why it requires new evidence or new science. And it just hasn't been demonstrated to have this opening and floodgates effect.
Can you put this bill and the state's process for appealing wrongful convictions in a wider context for us? How does New Hampshire's exoneration process compare with other states?
New Hampshire is well behind the times in regards to the exoneration process and addressing wrongful convictions here. We have the lowest number of exonerations in the entire country. There's only three, none of which are for long-term prison sentences.
How does that compare numerically to other states?
I don't know the exact numbers everywhere else, but they're all higher. And I can also tell you that we're only one of three states in the entire country that have an absolute bar on a new trial statute in terms of a time limit.
You have clients in prison right now that are trying to prove their innocence, that are looking at this bill. As we wait to see if the Legislature overrides the veto. What are you hearing from them?
Hope. Hope for the first time in a long time. Hope that this is going to open the door to shedding the light on the innocent. Hopeful that this is going to be a key to open the door to prison for them. Hope that they're going to have their long term sentences overturned. A lot of hope.
