Iowa Governor Tom Vilsack says he doesn’t think a recent proposal to reinstate a limited death penalty would make children any safer in Iowa. The proposal from some Republican state lawmakers would bring back executions in cases involving child molesters.
Vilsack, a Catholic, says he doesn’t think he can back it.
Vilsack says his faith tradition doesn’t support the death penalty and he’s consistent and true to that faith. Although Vilsack goes against the Catholic faith in his support of abortion.
Vilsack says he hopes the legislature doesn’t “play politics” with the issue and will search instead for areas of common ground. Vilsack says it’s more expensive to execute someone rather than carry out a life prison sentence and he says the death penalty doesn’t allow for a correction if someone is wrongly convicted.
Vilsack says if the proposal had been in effect for the last 20 years, it would have resulted in only two executions in Iowa, raising the question of whether it would make children any safer.
Vilsack says spending time on issues such as early childhood education, looking for innovative ways to enforce existing laws to protect our children and determining how to better monitor those who’ve molested kids in the past might do more to make things better for children in Iowa.