Iowa GOP senators seek reinstatement of limited death penalty

DES MOINES - A group of majority Senate Republicans wants to reinstate a limited death penalty in Iowa in cases where an adult kidnaps, rapes and murders a minor.

Senate File 335 would restore capital punishment in Iowa for the first time since 1965 by establishing a two-pronged process whereby a jury or judge could convict a perpetrator of committing multiple Class A offenses and separately a decision could be rendered to execute the offender via lethal injection. Any death penalty conviction would automatically be appealed to the Iowa Supreme Court and juvenile offenders would not be eligible for capital punishment.

'It's narrowly scoped,” said Sen. Jake Chapman, R-Adel, one of six GOP senators who introduced the death penalty measure on Wednesday. Sen. Rick Bertrand, R-Sioux City, also filed a death-penalty bill with slightly different provisions.

'Right now there is no criminal charge difference,” said Chapman, who noted that committing one or more Class A felonies carries a maximum penalty of life imprisonment so there's no deterrent for a kidnapper or rapist not to kill the victim.

'What this says is that if you do all three, you are going to be in line for the death penalty,” he noted. 'Not only is it a deterrent from someone thinking of taking that next step having kidnapped and raped and then considering killing that individual, it also is - for me - the penalty is fitting for the crime. So you have two aspects: you have the deterrence but then you also have if it does happen, what is the proper, just punishment for that crime.”

Sen. Brad Zaun, R-Urbandale, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee and a bill co-sponsor, said the bill is arriving with the session's first 'funnel” deadline approaching at the end of next week for non-money bills to have cleared at least one standing committee to remain eligible for debate this year. He said he hoped to schedule a subcommittee meeting next week but he was uncertain how far the measure would go this session.

He said the 2005 Eastern Iowa kidnapping and murder of 10-year-old Jetseta Gage is often cited as an example of why the death penalty is needed. In that case, Roger Bentley, a convicted sex offender and friend of Gage's family, was convicted of first-degree murder and first-degree kidnapping in 2006 and sentenced to two consecutive mandatory life sentences in prison without the possibility of parole.

'We have talked about this for many years,” Zaun said of reinstating capital punishment. 'There's no higher penalty if you kill off your witness. I typically am not a big death penalty person, but I think in this particular situation where a child is raped then killed, I agree that the death penalty is in order.”

Sen. Pam Jochum, D-Dubuque, said she was in the Iowa House when lawmakers debated reinstating the death penalty in 1995.

'We spent an enormous amount of time and emotional energy - that's part of our job - trying to decide whether or not that was a good thing for Iowa to do and the answer was no,” Jochum noted. 'So we've been through this more than once before and I think that in Iowa if you are convicted of a capital crime - life is life. You are going to die in prison and I think that's satisfactory.”

Earlier this month, Republicans who control the Legislature introduced a major rewrite of Iowa's collective bargaining law and passed it within 10 days using a 'time certain” procedural move that ended debate and brought the issue to a vote. Jochum said if Republicans use the same expedited procedure for the death penalty issue it 'would be an absolute injustice, truly, to give something of that magnitude that short a period of time where the state is sanctioning killing people.

'Regardless of the offense they committed,” she added, 'we're still going into the same gutter that others are in and I don't think the state should be involved in it.

'Life is life.”

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