And they provided the jury with the legal framework for its decision under the state's capital punishment law.
Iowa is one of fourteen US states without a capital punishment law.
But the Governor is convinced that the capital punishment law he signed in 1995 has reduced crime, so full steam ahead.
Had a capital punishment law been on the books at the time, he could have been condemned to death.
No one has been executed under New Jersey's 1982 capital punishment law.
He drafted Alabama's capital punishment law, an unusually rigorous one.
When he was in the legislature, he wrote California's capital punishment law.
They predict that upstate cities, too, will make steady use of the capital punishment law.
New capital punishment laws were passed in Arkansas and came into force on 23 March 1973.
Elsewhere, about a dozen states are re-examining their capital punishment laws.
