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Iowans Against the Death Penalty

Legislative Newsletter 2024

February 2024

Vol. 4 Issue #4

Until Next Year

Many Iowans are aware of a ritual in the Iowa General Assembly called “funnel week.” That week was this week. If a legislative bill, such as Senate Study Bill 3085 (this year’s effort to reinstate the death penalty in Iowa), fails to pass out of a committee, such as the Senate Judiciary Committee, the bill is dead for the year. Funnel week has come and gone and so has SSB 3085.

A bill may die, but an issue lasts forever. Under unusual circumstances, a bill re-establishing capital punishment in Iowa could come back up again for discussion in the Iowa Legislature this year. However, the possibility is extremely rare, just not impossible.

In any case, IADP needs to keep going in order to prepare for next year. It’s an election year, and legislative turnover may be conducive to our efforts, or unfavorable. We must remain vigilant.

The value of life

Senator Tony Bisignano (D-Des Moines) made a point to prove that the bill would call for the death penalty if a police officer was killed in the line of duty rushing into a school with an active shooter. However, the death penalty would not be considered if a child in that school was a victim of the active shooter. To paraphrase Senator Bisignano, are police officers, who willingly choose an occupation that they know is dangerous more valuable than our children in schools? Sitting in the room, you could sense that the bill was dead at that point.

Notable Quote

“But what then is capital punishment but the most premeditated of murders, to which no criminal’s deed, however calculated it may be, can be compared? For there to be equivalence, the death penalty would have to punish a criminal who had warned his victim of the date at which he would inflict a horrible death on him and who, from that moment onward, had confined him at his mercy for months. Such a monster is not encountered in private life.”

Albert Camus, "Reflections on the Guillotine"

Your membership in IADP

Membership in Iowans Against the Death Penalty is $15 annually.  We encourage you to join us by submitting a check for $15, along with your name, address, zip code, and email address to:

IADP

PO Box 782

Des Moines, IA 50303

Or, by joining online at:  http://www.iowansagainstthedeathpenalty.org/join-our-mailing-list

IADP is a section 501(c)(4) organization which uses some of its funds for lobbying.  Membership contributions to IADP are NOT tax deductible.

Iowans Against the Death Penalty FUND is an IADP sister organization which can accept tax deductible gifts and grants since it is a section 501(c)(3) organization with the Internal Revenue Service.  Making a tax-deductible gift to the IADP FUND does not mean you are an IADP member.