A bill advancing in the Iowa Senate would reinstate the death penalty, more than 60 years after the state’s last execution. The bill would allow lethal injection in cases of first-degree murder where a police officer is killed. Republican Senator Dave Rowley of Spirit Lake, who represents Kossuth County, told a Senate subcommittee on Monday he believes it should be an option in cases like that of Algona Police Officer Kevin Cram, who was killed in the line of duty last September.
The bill was opposed by religious advocates who said the state should not return to a policy of taking another life in response to murder. GOP lawmakers who favored the bill in the subcommittee said lethal injection should be available to provide closure to the families of fallen officers. Senator Tony Bisignano, a Democrat from Des Moines, said he’s bothered that the bill could apply the death penalty in the Algona case, but not in the mass shooting at Perry High School, had the gunman survived.
The proposal advanced to the Senate Judiciary Committee. Iowa has not used the death penalty since 1963 and it was abolished in 1965. Last year, Republican legislators tried to make the death penalty an option for someone convicted of kidnapping, raping and killing a child — but it never made it to the floor for debate.
