Capital punishment in Iowa

Capital punishment has been abolished in Iowa since 1965. Forty-five men were executed by hanging in Iowa between 1834 and 1963 for crimes including murder, rape, and robbery.

The first time that Iowa abolished the death penalty was in 1872, as a result of anti-death sentiment in the state, much due to Quaker, Unitarian and Universalist religious sentiment. By contrast, Presbyterians and Congregationalists advocated the retention of capital punishment, on biblical grounds. Anti-death penalty sentiment had been present in Iowa from its beginnings – first territorial Governor of Iowa Territory, Robert Lucas, at his first message to the Iowa Territorial Assembly in November 1838, advocated that capital punishment should be abolished. However, despite his advocacy, the Assembly passed legislation providing the death penalty for murder, to replace the existing legislation inherited from the Territory of Michigan providing for the same.

In 1846, the Chief Justice of the Iowa Territorial Supreme Court, Charles Mason, founded the Iowa Anti-Capital Punishment and Prison Discipline Society, which campaigned for the death penalty to be abolished. The Society supported a bill in 1847 to replace mandatory capital punishment for murder with discretionary (giving the jury the choice between death and life imprisonment); the bill passed the Senate but failed in the House. In 1851, both the House and Senate initially passed a new Criminal Code abolishing the death penalty; however, the intervention of a Presbyterian minister, Rev. Silas H. Hazzard, convinced the House to change its mind and reject the abolition, and after some disagreement the Senate relented and accepted the House's version of the Criminal Code with the death penalty still included.