Madeleine Carlisle writes:

David Welch’s wife died on Christmas Day 2016. He doesn’t remember much of what happened that next year. But in the grips of grief, he came to a fundamental realization, he told me: The death penalty is “just morally wrong.”

Welch has served as a Republican in the New Hampshire state House for more than three decades. For most of that time, he had consistently voted to uphold the death penalty. But after his wife’s death, he came to understand that when the state executes someone, it puts another family through the intense period of mourning he went through. “There is no reason for it,” he told me. “They’re innocent.”

Though law-and-order conservatives have long championed the death penalty, New Hampshire is one of a growing number of states where Republicans like Welch are joining Democrats to push for a ban. Last week, New Hampshire became the 21st state to outlaw capital punishment, one of 11 states this year—including GOP strongholds such as Kansas, Wyoming, Kentucky, and Missouri—where Republican lawmakers have sponsored bills to end the practice. The movement is the result of several political factors, including Republican and Democratic concern over the country’s criminal-justice system. But it’s also been motivated by lawmakers’ personal experiences, just like Welch’s. Death-penalty reform has quietly broken through as a bipartisan issue—one that could portend a shaky future for capital punishment in the U.S. [Continue reading…]