Des Moines — A bill to reinstate the death penalty in a limited number of cases is eligible for debate in the Iowa Senate.
The bill would make those convicted of kidnapping, raping, and murdering a person under the age of 18 eligible for a death sentence. Republican Senator Julian Garrett of Indianola, a retired attorney, would vote to make the death penalty an option in far more cases.
The bill cleared the Senate Judiciary Committee on a 10-to-eight vote. Senator Janice Weiner, a Democrat from Iowa City, says it’s an international embarrassment that some U.S. states still have the death penalty.
Other Democrats, like Senator Tony Bisignano of Des Moines, say if there’s a mistake and an innocent person is put to death, there’s no reversing that.
Garrett considers the death penalty a deterrent and he says a wrongful conviction is a worthwhile trade-off.
The chairman of the House Judiciary Committee has said he could support the death penalty on moral grounds. But Republican Representative Steven Holt of Denison says it’s impractical for several reasons. The drugs to administer a lethal injection are hard to find and Holt says the cost of sentencing someone to spend the rest of their life in prison is far less than the court costs associated with appeals to a death sentence and the expense of maintaining a death row in the state’s prison system.
