became the first man to be executed in New Hampshire. He was executed in Portsmouth for murder. In 1796, Thomas Powers, an African American, was hanged for rape. He was the first black person to be executed in the state. On January 3, 1822, Daniel Davis Farmer was hanged in Amherst for the murder of Ann Ayer in Goffstown in April 1821. In 1868, hangings were moved to the State Prison in Concord, after a riot followed the execution of Samuel Mills on the main street of Woodsville. Prior to the 1868 execution, hangings were carried out in public. In 1903, the punishment for murder in the first degree was changed from death, to death or imprisonment for life as the jury may determine... If the jury shall find the respondent guilty of murder in the first degree, the punishment shall be life imprisonment unless the jury shall add to their verdict the words, with capital punishment. In 1939, Howard Long, a storekeeper from Alton, Long was hanged at the New Hampshire State Prison in Concord on July 14, 1939, for molesting and fatally beating 10-year-old Mark Neville Jensen, from Laconia. In 1949, Ralph Jennings, a black man, was sentenced to be hanged for the murder of New Jersey nanny Ruth Eisenberg. Her body was found by hunters on a dirt road with panties shoved down her mouth along with a watch. Jennings was not executed but committed suicide in his cell by hanging himself. Jennings was convicted after a jury trial in Carroll County. The provided evidence insinuated it was a sex crime/homicide. The case became a national sensation and newspapers called Jennings a sex-murderer. Medical testimony stated the cause of death was asphyxiation. Furman v. Georgia (1972) In 1959, Frederick Martineau and Russell Nelson were convicted of murdering a businessman in a Nashua parking lot, who was scheduled to testify in a Rhode Island burglary case. Martineau and Nelson received 13 stays of execution. They were spared the death penalty in 1972 when the United States Supreme Court ruled in Furman v. Georgia, that "unitary trial" procedure, in which the jury was asked to return a verdict of guilt or innocence and, simultaneously, determine whether the defendant would be punished by death or life imprisonment, was in violation of the Eighth Amendment to the United States Constitution. 1970–present In 1971, the state legislature enacted RSA 630:1 Capital Murder.