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.
[2] The 1872 abolition was triggered by the case of George Stanley, who had been convicted of murder and sentenced to hang; Catholics and Quakers lobbied Governor Cyrus C. Carpenter to grant clemency.
[6] Since then, there have been repeated attempts to reinstate the death penalty, but none have managed to pass both houses of the Iowa State Legislature.
[7] In 2006, a Des Moines Register poll found 66% of Iowa adults favored reinstating the death penalty, while 29% opposed it.
In 2005, a federal court in Sioux City handed down the first death sentence in Iowa since the 1960s, to Dustin Honken and Angela Johnson.