Is the death penalty coming back to life?
State executions increase in 2025 while Trump issues executive order
This month, Florida is scheduled to execute two men, setting a modern-day record for the state and underscoring an unsettling trend for the nation.
The Florida Supreme Court on Tuesday cleared the way for the lethal injection of Michael Bell on July 15 for killing two people in 1993. Gov. Ron DeSantis also signed the death warrant for Edward Zakrzewski to die July 31 for the 1994 murders of his wife and two children. They would be the eighth and ninth people executed in Florida this year, the most since the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976.
The men would also be the 26th and 27th people executed nationally so far in 2025, surpassing the total in all of 2024. (You can read the names of the 25 prisoners, method of execution, and other information here: https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/executions/2025 )
The death penalty debate, which has raged through much of our nation’s history, has returned with new urgency. On his first day in office, President Trump signed an executive order aimed at making executions great again. Among other things, it orders the attorney general to seek the death penalty for the murder of a law-enforcement officer, or for “a capital crime committed by an alien illegally present in this country.”
The order also seeks new death penalties for the 37 men whose federal death penalty sentences were commuted to life without parole by President Biden.
The federal government executed 13 people in the last six months of Trump’s first term. The total was more than any president since FDR.
The long arc toward justice
I believe these developments are merely blips. The majority of executions this year happened in just three states: Florida, Texas, and South Carolina. Only a handful of states have conducted executions in the last few years, even if a death penalty law may still be on their books.
New death sentences are down nearly 30% compared with the same period last year, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. The group reported that Trump’s executive action has prompted few prosecutors to reopen the cases that Biden commuted.
Public sentiment has also shifted over time. A Gallup survey in October 2024 showed that 53% of those surveyed support the death penalty, compared with a high of 80% in 1994. And trends suggest the number will continue to drop: A majority of adults under age 43 oppose the death penalty.
A perennial debate in Iowa
If the uptick continues, will our increasingly red state follow?
Iowa abolished the death penalty 60 years ago. (First-degree murder carries mandatory life in prison without parole, or “death in prison.”) Nearly every legislative session, a bill emerges to reinstate the law in one way or another.
In 2025, Iowa legislators proposed reinstating the death penalty for the intentional killing of a peace officer. No lobbyist registered in support, and it died after clearing a Senate subcommittee. In previous years, the Legislature has considered reinstatement – either for any first-degree murder, or for more specific crimes, including kidnapping, sexually abusing, and killing children.
In 2018, Rep. Steven Holt, a ramrod conservative Republican from Denison, effectively stopped a death penalty bill in the Legislature.
“My conclusion after researching this bill was not exactly what I expected,” he said in a subcommittee meeting. “I support the death penalty in theory and believe it is absolutely morally OK based upon my faith. But I have great issues with its practical and prudent and fair application.”
More recently, as chair of the House Judiciary Committee, he expanded on his reasoning, listing the expense of the death penalty, its disproportionate impact on indigent defendants, and the possibility of wrongful convictions.
I admire Rep. Holt’s principled stand and his willingness to change his mind when presented with evidence. For his colleagues who remain in support of the death penalty, I assume that piling on more facts and figures about costs and barriers will fail to move them.
Instead, I invite them to read first-hand accounts from death row and the execution chamber.
One is Bryan Stevenson’s 2014 book, “Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption,” about the attorney’s efforts to free wrongly convicted and unjustly condemned prisoners on death row or otherwise destined to die in prison. His work uncovered our justice system’s “terrible mistakes” caused by racial bias, poor legal representation, prosecutorial overreach, and other factors. His clients included the mentally ill and disabled, women who suffered stillbirths but were convicted of murder, and those who committed crimes as children. Stevenson shared this lesson, which I repeated in a previous post: “Each of us is more than the worst thing we’ve ever done.”
Another is Elizabeth Bruenig’s cover story in the July 2025 issue of The Atlantic magazine. Bruenig, whose own family was harmed by murder, has made it a mission to witness executions — to shed light on the often secretive act of a government killing its own citizens. The state of Alabama has banned Bruenig from its prisons after her reporting on grisly, botched executions.
Her article reinforced to me that the death penalty is the very antithesis of restorative justice, as it neither heals nor makes anyone whole. She writes about getting to know the inmates and their repentance:
“The death penalty is, to some degree, indiscriminate: Both innocent and guilty people have been sentenced to death. But the death penalty is also morally indiscriminate in an additional way, in that it kills guilty people who may have become good people. By the time execution arrives, the offender may be a completely different person than the one that took a life. We can’t know the nature or potential of another’s soul.”
Explore the impressive lineup of writers, plus Letters from Iowans, in the Iowa Writers’ Collaborative. They are from around the state and contribute commentary and feature stories of interest to those who care about Iowa.
If State Senator Julian Garrett retires in 2026, there may be no death penalty champion left in the Iowa Senate. He and Brad Zaun were the most vocal advocates.