Iowa

History of the Death Penalty

Iowa car­ried out 46 exe­cu­tions between 1834 and 1965. All of those exe­cut­ed were men; 43 were exe­cut­ed for mur­der and 3 were exe­cut­ed for rape.

Notable Cases

On July 15^th, 1845, Mormon broth­ers William and Steven Hodges were hanged togeth­er for mur­der. Both broth­ers died pro­claim­ing their inno­cence, blam­ing the ver­dicts on anti-Mormon prejudice.

The 1858 hang­ing of William Hinkle drew a crowd of 15,000 peo­ple. The Ottumwa Courier called it the largest gath­er­ing for any event west of the Mississippi.

Milestones in Abolition/​Reinstatement

Iowa’s orig­i­nal death penal­ty statute remained active until 1872. Governor Cyrus Carpenter, spurred by an active anti-death penal­ty Quaker and Unitarian pop­u­la­tion, signed the first leg­is­la­tion to abol­ish the death penal­ty in Iowa. The abo­li­tion did not last long how­ev­er, as a nation­al eco­nom­ic depres­sion and a wave of crime swept over Iowa in the years short­ly after. Mobs began tak­ing what they saw as jus­tice into their own hands, lynch­ing sev­er­al accused or con­vict­ed defen­dants in the six years after abo­li­tion. The lynch­ings were blamed large­ly on the absence of a death penal­ty. In 1878, cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment was rein­stat­ed by the Iowa leg­is­la­ture in order to bring an end to lynch­ings and to attempt to stem the flood of crime that had hit the state.

1964 brought the most suc­cess­ful elec­tion year for Democrats in the his­to­ry of the state of Iowa, paving the way for pas­sage of anoth­er abo­li­tion bill in 1965. Governor Harold Hughes signed the bill that abol­ished Iowa’s death penal­ty a sec­ond time. Since then, numer­ous attempts have been made at rein­state­ment. The most seri­ous of these rein­state­ment efforts came in the wake of the kid­nap­ping, sex­u­al assault, and mur­der of nine-year old Anna Marie Emry in 1994. Although Governor Terry Branstad made rein­state­ment of the death penal­ty cen­tral to his 1994 reelec­tion cam­paign, none of the pro­posed mea­sures were able to pass both hous­es of Iowa’s state leg­is­la­ture. (Gov. Branstad held office from 1983 – 1999, and was re-elect­ed in 2011.)

Resources

• Iowans Against the Death Penalty
• Department of Corrections
• Prosecutors
• Public defend­er’s office
• Victims’ ser­vices