Iowa Lawmakers Want To Reinstate Death Penalty: Republican lawmakers in Iowa have introduced a bill aiming to reinstate the death penalty in their state.  William Petroski of The Des Moines Register reports that Senate File 239 would allow executions to take place for those convicted of kidnapping, raping, and murdering a minor.  The last time the state of Iowa executed a death row inmate was in 1963, just two years later, the death penalty was abolished. 

FL Legislature Considers Prison Reform: A Florida Senate committee has given preliminary approval for a bill seeking to create an independent group to investigate wrongdoing in the state's troubled prison system.  Mary Ellen Klas of the Miami Herald reports that in a unanimous vote, the Senate Criminal Justice Committee approved SB2070, which mandate a nine-person Criminal Justice Commission that would be permitted to conduct random inspections in both state-run and private prisons, monitor inmate healthcare, and investigate allegations of abuse.  The Florida Department of Corrections has been plagued by allegations of cover-ups and rumors of inmate abuse for the past several years.

Habitual Felon Accused of Murder: The California man accused of stabbing a woman to death on a busy Sacramento street corner last week has a violent criminal past, and has been a registered sex offender since 2011.  Gamaliel Ortiz of KCRA reports that police believe 47-year-old Timothy Varmall violently attacked the woman and left her body on the corner of a busy intersection before fleeing the area when authorities arrived.  Varmall has prior convictions of sexual assault against a minor and sexual penetration of a victim with a foreign object by force.  Upon his release from prison, he was deemed a 'moderate-low' risk under the state's sex offender risk assessment.