CONCORD, N.H. (AP) – After former state Rep. Renny Cushing’s father was murdered, people told him they hoped the man who did it would “fry so you can get some comfort.”

Instead, Cushing pleaded for mercy for men like the grudge-bearing neighbor who gunned down his father and fought to repeal the state’s death penalty.

Now he questions whether a jury would shrug off New Hampshire’s long-standing unease with the death penalty and sentence Michael “Stix” Addison to death if he’s convicted in the shooting death of Manchester Police Officer Michael Briggs.

“There is a family out there grieving, two children without a father,” said Cushing, founder of Murder Victims’ Families for Human Rights, which represents victims across the country who oppose capital punishment. He notes 13 states don’t have capital punishment.

New Hampshire appears to be a state divided over capital punishment. The statute is narrow and has been applied only once in the last decade and not carried out since 1939. The state has no one on death row and no death chamber in which to administer the prescribed lethal injection or hanging, if injection is not possible.

On Wednesday, the attorney general’s office won legislative approval to spend $420,000 pursuing a death penalty case against Addison. The cost could rise well above $1 million.

“Because they haven’t done a capital case in New Hampshire, people don’t understand the length of the process,” he said. “Death cases are different. Death penalty litigation is almost a separate speciality in law.”

Six years ago, the Legislature voted to repeal the death penalty. Then-Gov. Jeanne Shaheen brushed off appeals from a former president and Nobel Peace Prize winner – among others – and vetoed the repeal bill, leaving the law on the books. Since then anti-death penalty advocates have repeatedly tried to repeal the law.

Briggs, 35, who was married with two sons, was shot 15 minutes before his overnight bicycle patrol shift ended Monday, when he responded to a report of a shot fired in an inner city Manchester neighborhood.

Hours after Briggs’ death Tuesday afternoon, Attorney General Kelly Ayotte announced her intention to upgrade charges against Addison from attempted murder to capital murder.

Addison, 26, was arrested Monday evening in Boston and remains jailed there on $2 million bail.

New Hampshire’s death penalty law includes a short list of crimes, including murder of a law enforcement officer and murder during rape or attempted rape.

Additionally, the law requires two jury verdicts: one finding guilt, and another imposing the penalty. The jury must unanimously find two aggravating circumstances, including intent, for a death sentence. The state Supreme Court automatically reviews death sentences.

The last person charged with capital murder in New Hampshire was Gordon Perry, who avoided the possibility by pleading guilty to first-degree murder in Epsom police Officer Jeremy Charron’s death. Charron, who served with Briggs on the Epsom force, was gunned down while checking a parked car in August 1997.

Criminal defense lawyer Michael Ramsdell handled the Perry case when he was chief of the state’s homicide bureau.

“It’s much more difficult than handling first- and second-degree murder cases because there are so many more issues raised in death penalty cases,” Ramsdell said. “The amount of resources that need to be devoted far exceed any resources for any other kind of case.”

Ramsdell also handled a 1988 case involving three men who faced capital murder charges in the stabbing death of a pregnant woman. In that case one teen was acquitted and other was sentenced to 46 years to life in prison. The husband was never tried because the teens refused to testify against him.

He said a capital case in New Hampshire could take 10 years to complete since the state has not gone through a trial or the appeals process.

Ramsdell wouldn’t speculate on Addison’s case. “Anybody who tells you he has a gut feeling about the case … I would be very, very skeptical,” he said.

Democratic state Sen. Lou D’Allesandro, a death penalty advocate, believes it is clearly warranted in Briggs’ murder.

“I think the sentiment for this will be so strong given the circumstance surrounding this murder,” he said. “This was a deliberate act meant to kill from everything I have gathered.”

But Democratic state Rep. Jim Splaine, prime sponsor of recent repeal bills, believes a jury would decide life without parole is a worst fate.

“It is not being easier on criminals. It is tougher,” he said.

The issue will be on lawmakers’ agenda again next year though it isn’t likely to change anything.

Splaine said he has filed a new bill to repeal the death penalty, but both Gov. John Lynch and Republican challenger Jim Coburn promise to veto any such attempts.

Cushing’s father was shotgunned in the doorway of his Hampton home in 1988 by the neighbor who also was a town police officer.

Would a New Hampshire jury sentence Addison to death given the state’s divisions over the death penalty?

“It’s hard to say. That ends up being an individual decision a jury has to weigh,” Cushing said.