Iowa lawmakers have again introduced a bill that would bring back the death penalty for certain crimes.
Under a bill that won support from an Iowa Senate committee Wednesday, the state would allow the death penalty for someone convicted of first-degree murder if the crime also involved kidnapping and sexual abuse against a minor. The committee passed it on a 3-2 vote.
Twenty Republican senators are co-sponsoring the bill. That's less than half of the 50-member Senate, but more than the six senators who sponsored a similar measure last year.
Bills that would have reinstated the death penalty have been introduced in previous legislative sessions, but none have passed. Critics say this year's legislation is unlikely to fare better.
Iowa's last execution was in 1963 and the state outlawed the practice in 1965.
Sen. Jason Schultz, R-Schleswig, said Iowa law currently creates a "perverse incentive" to kill a victim who has been kidnapped and raped because the penalty for all three crimes is life in prison without parole. The bill would remove that, said Schleswig, who chaired the Senate judiciary subcommittee Wednesday.
"I do not find the death penalty to be un-Biblical, un-Christian," he said. "I believe that it doesn’t matter if it is a deterrent or not, there are some crimes for which you simply must be removed because they are so heinous and opposite the culture in which we live in."
Opponents of the death penalty said people of color, people with low incomes and people with mental illnesses are disproportionately represented on death row.
"The death penalty is unfair, it’s discriminatory, it’s fraught with error. The decision between life and death often turns on race, geography, the quality of counsel," said Mark Stringer, the executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Iowa.
Karen Person with the League of Women Voters of Iowa said the death penalty is costly and there is no evidence it's a deterrent. She said Iowa's current system ensures someone who commits murder or another class A felony will die in prison.
"The death penalty is irreversible and innocent people are known to have been executed. Iowa’s current penalty of life without the possibility of parole is a sufficiently harsh sentence," she said.
Patti McKee of Des Moines said she has been a victim of violent crime and opposes the death penalty.
"To me it is just state-sponsored vengeance and murder," she said.
Religious leaders also opposed the bill. Tom Chapman, a lobbyist with the Iowa Catholic Conference, noted that the subcommittee was held as the World Congress Against the Death Penalty gathered in Brussels. He read a letter from Pope Francis opposing the death penalty and recognizing "the possibility of repentance."
No lobbyists or members of the public spoke in favor of the bill.
Sen. Jake Chapman, R-Adel, supports the bill. He said the kidnapping, rape and murder of a minor "is about as bad as it can come."
"There are in my opinion some crimes so heinous, so despicable that the only proper justice is to have their life taken, this being one of them," he said.
Sen. Tony Bisignano, D-Des Moines, opposes the bill and doesn't believe it will pass. It brings up painful memories and creates false hope to bring the issue up every year, he said.
"There isn’t one caucus member of ours that would vote for this so I hope this is the last time in my lifetime here that we have to sit in a subcommittee and raise the false hope that the death penalty is coming back," he said.
Gov. Kim Reynolds told reporters Wednesday that she'll watch the bill and see where it goes.
"This is an opportunity again to talk about it but there’s a lot of things that go into considering that and I haven’t seen any shift from where we were last year," Reynolds said.
The Des Moines Register last polled on the issue of capital punishment in 2006. At that time, 66 percent of Iowa adults favored reviving the death penalty for certain crimes, and 29 percent opposed it.
Source: desmoinesregister.com, Stephen Gruber-Miller, February 27, 2019
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"One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed,
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted." -- Oscar Wilde
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted." -- Oscar Wilde