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Modern Iowa governors stingy with commutations compared to past

Erin Jordan

Apr. 6, 2013 7:05 am

Iowa inmates serving life prison terms during the last 30 years are more than ten times less likely to see their sentences commuted than in the previous 38 years.

From 1945 to 1983, Iowa governors commuted the sentences of an average 5.5 inmates a year, according to data provided by the Iowa Department of Corrections. Since 1983, lifers have seen only .4 commutations a year – or an average of one commutation every two to three years.

“There's been a large drop in granting clemency at the national level over the past 20 years,” said Ashley Nellis, senior policy analyst with the Sentencing Project, a Washington, D.C., group that promotes sentencing reform. “The political decision-makers are so politically entrenched and don't have the ability to do what they want.”

Commutation is a form of clemency in which a mandatory life sentence is converted to a fixed-length term with a possibility of parole.

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Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad, a Republican, has commuted the life prison terms of just two inmates in his 18 years in office. He has until May 4 to decide whether to grant that clemency to Rasberry Williams, a 66-year-old who has served 38 years in prison for a 1974 shooting outside a Waterloo pool hall.

Former Gov. Chet Culver, a Democrat, also commuted two life sentences, but led the state only four years.  Former Gov. Tom Vilsack, a Democrat who is now U.S. Secretary of Agriculture, commuted an average of one life sentence a year for his eight years in office.

Before this era, Iowa governors – Republicans and Democrats – were much more generous with commutations.

Gov. Herschel C. Loveless, who served from 1957 to 1961, commuted the life prison terms of 46 inmates.

But Gov. Leo Elthon holds the record – at least since 1945 -- for commuting the most sentences in the shortest amount of time. He commuted the terms of 17 lifers from November 1954 to January 1955.

A Jan. 10, 1955, story in The Gazette, said Elthon's commutations were following the wishes of Gov. William Beardsley, who died in a car accident.

Elthon commuted life sentences for nine inmates convicted of murder, five of bank robbery, one of attempted murder and two for crimes that would now be considered sexual abuse, The Gazette reported. Three people under age 18 were among those whose terms Elthon commuted.