(Radio Iowa) – A bill to reinstate the death penalty in a limited number of cases is eligible for debate in the Iowa Senate. The bill would make those convicted of kidnapping, raping and murdering a person under the age of 18 eligible for a death sentence. Republican Senator Julian Garrett of Indianola, a retired attorney, would vote to make the death penalty an option in far more cases.

“Given how difficult it is to get a bill passed in this legislature, we’re narrowing it down as much as we possibly can,” Garrett says. The bill cleared the Senate Judiciary Committee on a 10-to-eight vote. Senator Janice Weiner, a Democrat from Iowa City, says it’s an international embarrassment that some U.S. states still have the death penalty.

“It puts us right in line with Saudi Arabia, Iran, China and North Korea,” she says. Other Democrats, like Senator Tony Bisignano of Des Moines say if there’s a mistake and an innocent person is put to death, there’s no reversing that. “The state should not be in the business of killing people,” Bisignano says. Garrett considers the death penalty a deterrent and he says a wrongful conviction is a worthwhile trade off.

“If we make a mistake now and then and, as I say, mistakes under current technology are minuscule and we can save some innocent women’s lives down the road, that’s where the trade off is,” Garrett says. The chairman of the House Judiciary Committee has said he could support the death penalty on moral grounds. But Republican Representative Steven Holt of Denison says it’s impractical for several reasons.

The drugs to administer a lethal injection are hard to find and Holt says the cost of sentencing someone to spend the rest of their life in prison is far less than the court costs associated with appeals to a death sentence and the expense of maintaining a death row in the state’s prison system.