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News
Iowans Against the Death Penalty
Newsletter 2025
July 2025
Vol. 6 Issue #41
Interim news
Fortunately, the Iowa Legislature has gone home for the year, it’s the middle of summer, and not one crazy legislator is calling for a death penalty reinstatement bill.
Articles and columns of interest
We thank Mary Richards, Ben Allen, Bob Mulqueen, Marti Anderson, and Connie Ryan for their contributions to the articles posted below. In order to remain vigilant during a legislative session in Iowa, it’s best to keep up on activity throughout the United States on matters pertaining to capital punishment.
Please take a few minutes from your busy summer activities to peruse the articles below. Thanks!
Death Penalties Meet Their Fate
Mar 29, 2025, The Lever, By Sam Pollak
Even as Trump and other Republican leaders expand the use of capital punishment, some red states are moving in the opposite direction.
In an executive order Trump signed on his first day in office, the president directed the U.S. attorney general to seek the death penalty “for all crimes of a severity demanding its use.” In two specific circumstances, including when a law enforcement officer is killed or when the defendant accused of a capital crime is an immigrant without legal status, the government will pursue the death penalty “regardless of other factors,” the order states.
But new state legislation could limit the directive’s impact. State lawmakers are considering repealing or pausing their capital punishment laws over wrongful convictions and racial disparities. Since 1973, over 200 people awaiting execution have been exonerated, while Black and Hispanic individuals account for a disproportionate amount of inmates on death row.
In Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, and Ohio, Republican lawmakers have introduced bills to abolish the death penalty. Earlier this month, Georgia’s House of Representatives approved a bill that would prevent the execution of people with intellectual disabilities. And a GOP-sponsored bill in Oklahoma would pause all pending executions and prevent new execution dates from being scheduled.
Is the death penalty coming back to life?
State executions increase in 2025 while Trump issues executive order
Lynn Hicks, July 17, 2025, Iowa Capital Dispatch
Florida executed a man this week and is scheduled to put another to death this month, setting a modern-day record for the state and underscoring an unsettling trend for the nation.
Michael Bell was executed July 15, 2025. He was convicted in 1995 and sentenced to death for the murders of Jimmy West and Tamecka Smith. (Photo by Florida Department of Corrections)
Michael Bell was executed by lethal injection on July 15 for killing two people in 1993. Gov. Ron DeSantis also signed the death warrant for Edward Zakrzewski to die July 31 for the 1994 murders of his wife and two children. He would be the ninth person executed in Florida this year, the most since the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976.
Zakrzewski would also be the 27th person executed nationally so far in 2025, surpassing the total in all of 2024. (You can read the names of the first 26 prisoners, method of execution, and other information here: https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/executions/2025 )
The death penalty debate, which has raged through much of our nation’s history, has returned with new urgency. On his first day in office, President Trump signed an executive order aimed at making executions great again. Among other things, it orders the attorney general to seek the death penalty for the murder of a law-enforcement officer, or for “a capital crime committed by an alien illegally present in this country.”
The order also seeks new death penalties for the 37 men whose federal death penalty sentences were commuted to life without parole by President Biden.
The federal government executed 13 people in the last six months of Trump’s first term. The total was more than any president since FDR.
The long arc toward justice
I believe these developments are merely blips. The majority of executions this year happened in just three states: Florida, Texas, and South Carolina. Only a handful of states have conducted executions in the last few years, even if a death penalty law may still be on their books.
New death sentences are down nearly 30% compared with the same period last year, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. The group reported that Trump’s executive action has prompted few prosecutors to reopen the cases that Biden commuted.
Public sentiment has also shifted over time. A Gallup survey in October 2024 showed that 53% of those surveyed support the death penalty, compared with a high of 80% in 1994. And trends suggest the number will continue to drop: A majority of adults under age 43 oppose the death penalty.
A perennial debate in Iowa
If the uptick continues, will our increasingly red state follow?
Iowa abolished the death penalty 60 years ago. (First-degree murder carries mandatory life in prison without parole, or “death in prison.”) Nearly every legislative session, a bill emerges to reinstate the law in one way or another.
In 2025, Iowa legislators proposed reinstating the death penalty for the intentional killing of a peace officer. No lobbyist registered in support, and it died after clearing a Senate subcommittee. In previous years, the Legislature has considered reinstatement – either for any first-degree murder, or for more specific crimes, including kidnapping, sexually abusing, and killing children.
In 2018, Rep. Steven Holt, a ramrod conservative Republican from Denison, effectively stopped a death penalty bill in the Legislature.
State Rep. Steven Holt is a Republican from Denison. (Photo courtesy of Iowa Legislature)
“My conclusion after researching this bill was not exactly what I expected,” he said in a subcommittee meeting. “I support the death penalty in theory and believe it is absolutely morally OK based upon my faith. But I have great issues with its practical and prudent and fair application.”
More recently, as chair of the House Judiciary Committee, he expanded on his reasoning, listing the expense of the death penalty, its disproportionate impact on indigent defendants, and the possibility of wrongful convictions.
I admire Rep. Holt’s principled stand and his willingness to change his mind when presented with evidence. For his colleagues who remain in support of the death penalty, I assume that piling on more facts and figures about costs and barriers will fail to move them.
Instead, I invite them to read first-hand accounts from death row and the execution chamber.
One is Bryan Stevenson’s 2014 book, “Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption,” about the attorney’s efforts to free wrongly convicted and unjustly condemned prisoners on death row or otherwise destined to die in prison. His work uncovered our justice system’s “terrible mistakes” caused by racial bias, poor legal representation, prosecutorial overreach, and other factors. His clients included the mentally ill and disabled, women who suffered stillbirths but were convicted of murder, and those who committed crimes as children. Stevenson shared this lesson, which I repeated in a previous post: “Each of us is more than the worst thing we’ve ever done.”
Another is Elizabeth Bruenig’s cover story in the July 2025 issue of The Atlantic magazine. Bruenig, whose own family was harmed by murder, has made it a mission to witness executions — to shed light on the often-secretive act of a government killing its own citizens. The state of Alabama has banned Bruenig from its prisons after her reporting on grisly, botched executions.
Her article reinforced to me that the death penalty is the very antithesis of restorative justice, as it neither heals nor makes anyone whole. She writes about getting to know the inmates and their repentance:
“The death penalty is, to some degree, indiscriminate: Both innocent and guilty people have been sentenced to death. But the death penalty is also morally indiscriminate in an additional way, in that it kills guilty people who may have become good people. By the time execution arrives, the offender may be a completely different person than the one that took a life. We can’t know the nature or potential of another’s soul.”
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Delaware lawmakers last week voted to amend the state’s constitution to prohibit the death penalty. Should the measure pass again in the next legislative session, as required for constitutional amendments in the state, Delaware would become only the second state with an explicit constitutional bar on the death penalty, after Michigan. (The death penalty is forbidden in 21 additional states by statute or because their supreme courts have found laws allowing it unconstitutional.)
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For death penalty opponents, the move is a rare bright spot. This year, 26 people have been executed nationwide, compared with only 9 people by this time last year. As of Tuesday night, when Florida executed Michael Bell, more people have been put to death in 2025 than in any year since 2015. The executions have been concentrated in three states (Florida, South Carolina, and Texas) at a time of declining public support for the death penalty.
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Faced with difficulties obtaining the drugs needed for lethal injections — largely because pharmaceutical companies have objected to the use of their products for executions — states have passed laws resurrecting long-abandoned methods like electrocution or adopting untested ones like nitrogen hypoxia.
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The results have been gruesome. When Alabama killed Kenneth Smith last year in the country’s first-ever nitrogen hypoxia execution, witnesses said he writhed and gasped for several minutes. It took at least 22 minutes for him to die.
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This April, a three-person firing squad in South Carolina executed Mikal Mahdi. An autopsy revealed only two bullets struck him, neither in the heart, likely causing him immense suffering while still conscious.
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The South Carolina Supreme Court last summer rejected claims that execution by firing squad or electrocution violated the state’s ban on “cruel or unusual” punishment. The court noted that a person killed by firing squad would feel “excruciating pain” for only 10 to 15 seconds unless there was “a massive botch . . . in which each member of the firing squad simply misses the inmate’s heart” — exactly what then happened to Mahdi.
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When it comes to challenges to the method of execution, the South Carolina high court is the only one to have considered the constitutionality of the firing squad. However, the high courts of Georgia and Nebraska both declared execution by electric chair cruel and unusual in violation of their state constitutions in 2001 and 2008, respectively. Florida’s found it constitutional in 1999.
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The U.S. Supreme Court, meanwhile, “has been very clear repeatedly that it has no interest in method-of-execution challenges,” said John Mills of public-interest law firm Phillips Black, which represents multiple people on death row, in an interview with State Court Report. “States have become more willing to experiment as a direct result of the federal courts’ unwillingness to get involved and stop them.”
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This experimentation and uptick in executions comes amid potentially grave miscarriages of justice. In September, Missouri executed Marcellus Williams despite a motion to vacate his conviction by the prosecutor’s office that originally tried his case. The prosecutor asserted that new evidence undermined the conviction. Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey argued that res judicata — the principle that parties cannot raise claims or defenses that have already been decided — barred any relief for Williams. The state supreme court rejected the prosecutor’s motion.
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In Oklahoma, the court of criminal appeals — the state’s highest court on criminal matters — similarly refused last year to vacate the conviction and death sentence of Richard Glossip, despite the state attorney general’s concession that prosecutorial misconduct required a new trial. The U.S. Supreme Court this term agreed with Glossip and the attorney general and ordered the state to retry Glossip. (Mills represented Glossip in that case.)
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And yesterday, a Texas court scheduled a new execution date — October 16 — for Robert Roberson, whose possible innocence sparked an interbranch conflict in December. Roberson was sentenced to death in 2003 for the murder of his daughter based on “shaken baby” syndrome, a diagnosis increasingly labeled “junk science.” The day before he was set to die, a bipartisan state legislative committee issued him a subpoena to testify, forcing the executive branch to either halt the execution or dishonor the subpoena. The Texas Supreme Court held that the legislature’s action interfered with the executive branch’s lawful administration of the death penalty in violation of the separation of powers under the Texas Constitution.
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Finally, a case pending before the California Supreme Court claims that the racially discriminatory application of the state’s death penalty violates the state constitution’s equal protection clause. At least one state, Washington, has invalidated its death penalty because it was imposed “in an arbitrary and racially biased manner” in violation of the state’s ban on cruel punishment. Across the country, Black defendants are many times more likely to receive death sentences than similarly situated white defendants. Study after study also shows that the likelihood of a death sentence significantly increases if a victim is white.
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During a period when the U.S. Supreme Court has shown little interest in addressing injustices associated with the death penalty, state constitutions can offer an alternative path. “States should be willing to give independent meaning to their constitutional clauses,” Mills said. “There are opportunities there.”
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What you can do
Even though it is summer, and legislators are away from the Capital, you can still talk to your legislators. It’s as simple as clicking here and calling them, sending them an email or letter, or better yet, arrange a meeting with them. Truly, they will want to hear what you have to say. Please share any information on your legislators’ positions with IADP.
Iowans Against the Death Penalty (IADP) prides itself on being fiscally responsible, relying on passionate and dedicated volunteers to continue its singular mission.
Membership in IADP helps pay for the everyday, increasing costs of stationery, copying when it cannot be done in-house, our website, and office supplies in our continuing effort to successfully lobby Iowa legislators from reinstating the death penalty. IADP is operated entirely by
volunteers; we have no expense for salaries or other financial burdens that many other nonprofits experience.
Your membership in IADP
Many individuals receiving this newsletter are current with their annual membership. Send an email to info@iowansagainstthedeathpenalty.org to find out the status of your membership. Thank you!
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.
Iowans Against the Death Penalty
Newsletter 2025
March 2025
Vol. 5 Issue #4
It was a mild threat
Senate File 320 is a bill that would reestablish capital punishment in Iowa whenever a person “intentionally kills a peace officer, who is on duty, under any circumstances, with knowledge that the person killed is a peace officer.” It was introduced this year by seven Republican senators. The bill was introduced at the request of a northwestern Iowa family whose son, a police officer in Algona, was shot while attempting to arrest a man who had an active warrant for his arrest from a neighboring county.
Prior to the subcommittee meeting the legislators asked the participants present to be respectful toward the family, who was scheduled to speak via Zoom at the meeting. Unexpectedly, the father of the slain officer passed away a day or two earlier, and the family was not represented at the subcommittee hearing. Nonetheless, everyone who spoke was respectful, as is usually the case in the Iowa Capitol.
Several people spoke against the bill; no one in the committee room, other than two legislators, spoke in favor of the bill. A Zoom participant spoke in support of the death penalty, but did not support SF 320 as it was written.
On Thursday, March 6, 2025, the Senate Judiciary Committee met for the final time this year prior to the Legislature’s self-imposed limits on when bills must be moved from a committee in order to stay eligible for debate during the remainder of the session (funnel deadline). SF 320 was not brought up for consideration. In other words, like many sessions prior, the death penalty is dead for this year.
What you can do
Talk to your legislators. It’s as simple as clicking here and calling them, sending them an email or letter, or better yet, arrange a meeting with them. Truly, they will want to hear what you have to say. Please share any information on your legislators’ positions with IADP.
Although the death penalty should not be a threat for the rest of the 2025 legislative session, an overwhelming tragedy in Iowa could prompt a bill that is an exception to the funnel deadline. IADP takes nothing for granted.
Iowans Against the Death Penalty (IADP) prides itself on being fiscally responsible, relying on passionate and dedicated volunteers to continue its singular mission.
Membership in IADP helps pay for the everyday, increasing costs of stationery, copying when it cannot be done in-house, our website, and office supplies in our continuing effort to successfully lobby Iowa legislators from reinstating the death penalty. IADP is operated entirely by
volunteers; we have no expense for salaries or other financial burdens that many other nonprofits experience.
Your membership in IADP
Many individuals receiving this newsletter are current with their annual membership. Send an email to info@iowansagainstthedeathpenalty.org to find out the status of your membership. Thank you!
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.
Iowans Against the Death Penalty
Newsletter 2025
February 2025
Vol. 5 Issue #3
Notice of a change
In the previous newsletter, we announced that the subcommittee on Senate File 320, a bill that would reestablish capital punishment in Iowa whenever a person “intentionally kills a peace officer, who is on duty, under any circumstances, with knowledge that the person killed is a peace officer,” consisted of Senators Scott Webster, chair (R-Bettendorf); Tony Bisignano (D-Des Moines); and David Rowley (R-Spirit Lake). Since we sent that newsletter, a change has been made in the makeup of the subcommittee. Senator Janice Weiner (D-Iowa City), the Senate Democratic Leader, will replace Senator Tony Bisignano on the subcommittee.
A subcommittee meeting has not been scheduled at the time of this mailing, but a brief note will be sent to subscribers as soon as we are aware of a meeting, the location, and the time.
Does this seem fair? Or just insane?
This article was printed at SCOTUSBlog on February 24, 2025 By Amy Howe
Supreme Court divided over death row right to DNA evidence testing
The Supreme Court on Monday was divided over whether a Texas man on death row has a legal right to sue, known as standing, to bring federal civil rights claims challenging the constitutionality of the Texas laws governing DNA testing. Ruben Gutierrez is trying to obtain DNA testing of evidence that he says would clear him, but it was unclear whether a majority of the justices agreed that his challenge should be allowed to move forward.
Gutierrez was sentenced to death for the 1998 murder of 85-year-old Escolastica Harrison in Brownsville, Tex. Gutierrez concedes that he was involved in a scheme to rob Harrison of $600,000 in cash that she kept in her home, but he insists now that he never entered Harrison’s home and did not participate in her murder.
Gutierrez contends that DNA from several pieces of evidence — such as a hair and nail scrapings from Harrison’s finger and blood stains — would prove that he never went into Harrison’s home. And if that DNA evidence had been available, he argues, the jury would not have sentenced him to death.
The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, the state’s highest court for criminal cases, in 2011 upheld a state trial court’s denial of Gutierrez’s request for DNA testing. It ruled that the Texas law governing requests for DNA testing does not allow testing when the results of the testing would only affect the sentence that a prisoner received, rather than the determination of guilt or innocence. In other words, the Texas law would only allow Gutierrez the DNA testing if he could prove that, with that evidence, he wouldn’t have been convicted at all.
Several years later, Gutierrez filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against Luis Saenz, the district attorney who prosecuted him, and Felix Sauceda, the Brownsville police chief. He challenged the constitutionality of the state’s DNA testing procedures, arguing that they violated his right to due process – that is, fair treatment by the government.
A federal district court in agreed that the Texas scheme governing DNA testing and post-conviction relief violated his constitutional right to due process. Although Texas law gives prisoners the right to file a second request for post-conviction relief if they can provide “clear and convincing” evidence that they should not have been sentenced to death, Senior U.S. District Judge Hilda Tagle explained, the state’s DNA testing laws take away a prisoner’s ability to obtain that evidence.
A divided panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit threw out that ruling last year. It held that Gutierrez did not have standing to bring his lawsuit because the state court of criminal appeals had held that even if DNA testing showed that Gutierrez never went inside Harrison’s house, he still would have been eligible for the death penalty because of his role in the robbery scheme that led to her murder. Therefore, the court of appeals concluded, prosecutors would not be likely to order DNA testing, and so the courts cannot provide him with any relief – one of the criteria for standing.
The Supreme Court once again put Gutierrez’s execution on hold in July 2024, just 20 minutes before he was scheduled to be executed, to give the justices time to consider his petition for review of the 5th Circuit’s ruling. The justices agreed in October 2024 to take up his case.
At the Supreme Court on Monday morning, Gutierrez’s lawyer, Anne Fisher, told the justices that his injury – the denial of evidence for DNA testing – can be addressed through a ruling in his favor because a ruling “that finds certain procedures in” Texas law unconstitutional “eliminates those statutory procedures as a lawful reason” for state officials to bar the testing.
On the other hand, William Cole, a deputy solicitor general from Texas, countered that the district court’s ruling did not provide relief for Gutierrez’s injury. Under the Supreme Court’s recent decision allowing Rodney Reed’s challenge to the state’s DNA testing law to move forward, the question whether a lawsuit will provide a remedy hinges on whether the ruling in the defendant’s favor will “eliminate the state prosecutor’s justification for denying the testing and thereby … significantly increase the likelihood that the prosecutor would hand over the evidence.” But here, Cole said, the prosecutor has relied on “several independent” reasons to reject Gutierrez’s request for access to the evidence.
Some of the court’s conservative justices were skeptical that a ruling in Gutierrez’s favor would actually make a difference. Justice Neil Gorsuch referred to a ruling by the state court of criminal appeals indicating that even if the DNA testing law does apply to the death penalty stage, Gutierrez still would not receive relief. It was, Gorsuch suggested, effectively “harmless error.”
Fisher pushed back, arguing that the courts should take a broader look at the evidence to determine whether Gutierrez should still be subject to the death penalty.
But Chief Justice John Roberts was skeptical of that contention, asking how much more evidence would be required to tip the scale in Gutierrez’s favor. Is it, he queried, “a tiny thimbleful of additional evidence? I mean, how is a court supposed to figure that out?”
Justice Samuel Alito expressed frustration more generally, noting to Fisher that “this litigation has been going on for more than 25 years. I just am interested in knowing whether it’s going anywhere.”
Justice Brett Kavanaugh was more sympathetic to Gutierrez. He resisted the suggestion that Gutierrez lacked standing to sue because prosecutors, even in the face of a ruling in Gutierrez’s favor, might not turn over evidence for testing. “I just don’t see,” Kavanaugh said, “how we can say something’s not redressable just because the prosecutor is going to say I’m not going to comply with a court order. You know, if President Nixon said I’m not going to come turn over the tapes no matter what, you wouldn’t say, oh, I guess we don’t have standing to hear the executive privilege case.”
Justice Elena Kagan was unconvinced that Gutierrez was not entitled to testing because, even if the evidence were tested and were helpful to him, he would still be eligible for the death penalty. A state court made “the identical backup argument in” Reed’s case, she observed, but the Supreme Court “clearly did not care about” it – and instead ruled that Reed’s challenge was allowed to move forward.
For her part, Justice Sonia Sotomayor also appeared frustrated – but with the state’s failure to order the testing, rather than the length of the litigation. “It seems odd to be fighting it tooth and nail,” she told Cole, particularly when there is more evidence about the “potential culpability” of the victim’s nephew. “Don’t you want to know,” she asked Cole, “you’re convicting the right person for the right thing?”
A decision in the case is expected by summer.
This article was originally published at Howe on the Court.
What you can do
Talk to your legislators. It’s as simple as clicking here and calling them, sending them an email or letter, or better yet, arrange a meeting with them. Truly, they will want to hear what you have to say. Please share any information on your legislators’ positions with IADP.
If you believe that only God can create a soul, shouldn’t you believe that only God can take a soul?
Your membership in IADP
Many individuals receiving this newsletter are current with their annual membership. Send an email to info@iowansagainstthedeathpenalty.org to find out the status of your membership. Thank you!
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.
Iowans Against the Death Penalty
Newsletter 2025
February 2025
Vol. 5 Issue #2
Déjà vu
Senate File 320 is a bill that would reestablish capital punishment in Iowa whenever a person “intentionally kills a peace officer, who is on duty, under any circumstances, with knowledge that the person killed is a peace officer.” The bill was introduced on Monday, February 17, and was referred to the Senate Judiciary Committee.
On Wednesday, February 19, the bill was assigned to the subcommittee of Senators Scott Webster, chair (R-Bettendorf); Tony Bisignano (D-Des Moines); and David Rowley (R-Spirit Lake). This is the same subcommittee as last year’s death penalty bill, Senate Study Bill 3085. As a matter-of- fact, this year’s bill is last year’s bill with a tweak. Last year’s bill had a serious flaw that was never amended before it reached the Senate Judiciary Committee. The flaw allowed the death penalty for “any” first-degree murder. This year’s bill is altered to address the first-degree murder of a peace officer, only.
This is taken from last year’s IADP Newsletter regarding last year’s bill:
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?
Myth one
Of course, you will hear that this is a “limited” bill. No bill is limited! Once an issue has made it into the Iowa Code, it comes up yearly in efforts to add to the limitations. A bill enhancing the penalty for assault upon a peace officer or fire fighter, Senate File 443, passed unanimously in the House and Senate in 1995. It was considered a limited bill. Since then, the title of the Code section has been amended to “Assaults on persons engaged in certain occupations,” and jailers, correctional staff, employees of the board of parole, health care providers, employees of the Department of Human Services, and employees of the Department of Revenue have been added.
Based upon this example, there is no telling where it will stop if it stops at all.
Myth two
You may also hear that this bill will protect peace officers. No bill can guarantee protecting anyone. If a person is intent on killing someone, they will murder. Not one person killing a peace officer, or most anyone else for that matter, possesses a state of mind that can be comprehended by rational people. To understand the criminal mind, you must realize that murder is not a rational act.
What you can do
Talk to your legislators. It’s as simple as clicking here and calling them, sending them an email or letter, or better yet, arrange a meeting with them. Truly, they will want to hear what you have to say. Please share any information on your legislators’ positions with IADP.
What to say
Here is a list of reasons why the death penalty is bad public policy:
If you believe that only God can create a soul, shouldn’t you believe that only God can take a soul?
Why do people kill?
Most murders are committed because of the following four categories:
In the heat of passion
Under the influence of drugs or alcohol
Evidence of a serious mental health condition
The perpetrator does not believe he will be caught
Your membership in IADP
Many individuals receiving this newsletter are current with their annual membership. Send an email to info@iowansagainstthedeathpenalty.org to find out the status of your membership. Thank you!
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.
Iowans Against the Death Penalty
Newsletter 2025
January 2025
Vol. 5 Issue #1
No bill, YET
Iowa legislators have gaveled in for the 91st General Assembly and have completed the tasks of determining parking slots, seats, and mileage allowance. The busy part comes next.
As bills are introduced and committees are meeting to determine the fate of hundreds of bills yet to be read into the chambers, Iowans Against the Death Penalty is waiting for the ball to drop into the Senate Judiciary Committee. That ball, or bill, would be a legislative proposal that would suggest Iowa reinstate capital punishment into the criminal code.
Over the past twenty years, fourteen bills calling for reinstatement have begun in the Senate Judiciary Committee. Two have passed out of the Senate Judiciary Committee and made it to the floor of the Senate for debate. However, that’s as far as each bill survived.
What you can do
Talk to your legislators. It’s as simple as clicking here and calling them, sending them an email or letter, or better yet, set up a meeting with them. Truly, they will want to hear what you have to say.
What to say
Here is a list of reasons why the death penalty is bad public policy:
Why do people kill?
Most murders are committed because of the following four categories:
In the heat of passion
Under the influence of drugs or alcohol
Evidence of a serious mental health condition
The perpetrator does not believe he will be caught
But my legislator said . . .
“I don’t think a bill will be debated this year.”
That is not what I asked. Do you oppose capital punishment?
“I am for the death penalty under certain circumstances.”
Today’s certain circumstances become next year’s several circumstances.
“There are studies that say the death penalty is a deterrent.”
Those studies are skewed.
“DNA will make sure we get the right person.” No, DNA can eliminate a suspect, but it cannot definitively determine that a defendant is guilty. “Forensic investigators take many precautions to prevent mistakes, but human error can never be eliminated.” “DNA can be accurate “only if the biological evidence is properly collected, preserved and kept from contamination. And only if the analysis is done correctly.”
“I do not find the death penalty to be un-Biblical, un-Christian,” or, “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.”
“’There are crimes so heinous, that only proper justice is to have their life taken.” Two words that always pop up are “heinous” and “justice.” A heinous crime is a phrase used often by proponents of capital murder. But just what does the word “heinous” mean? Merriam-Webster defines the word as “enormously and shockingly evil.” Are not all murders heinous?
Exactly what is justice?
Everyone seeks justice and knows what it means to themselves. Proponents of the death penalty claim to seek justice for the victim and the victim’s family. Opponents also seek justice for the condemned. Can they both have justice? An attempt to define justice has come from numerous sources throughout the history of the world. Plato, Confucius, and Immanual Kant have all taken a stab at defining justice.
Justice is an abstract noun. Because we can’t visually see it, touch it, or pick it up, it remains like beauty; it’s in the eye of the beholder. Justice should not be mistaken for revenge, hate, or anger. Justice should not benefit one philosophy over the other, but should bring everyone together. It’s embodied in the Pledge of Allegiance – “With liberty and justice for all.” Justice for some should not carry unfair consequences for others.
Your membership in IADP
Many individuals receiving this newsletter are current with their annual membership. Send an email to info@iowansagainstthedeathpenalty.org to find out the status of your membership. Thank you!
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.
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