KDSN RADIO News
Man who was part of Iowa death penalty debate dies in prison
An inmate who was put into the spotlight in the effort to end the death penalty in Iowa has died in prison.
Leon Tice Junior of Council Bluffs was convicted of murder in the 1963 shooting deaths of the 13-year-old daughter and the two-year-old son of a woman he had been seeing. According to the website Justia, Tice apparently became upset when the woman no longer wanted to see him.
Then Governor Harold Hughes was trying to get the death penalty abolished in the state and when the effort failed to pass in the Legislature in 1963 he made what was a controversial move to commute Tice’s death sentence to a life term. Hughes continued to push for the end of capital punishment in his second term, and it was abolished in 1965.
Tice was 24 when he entered prison in September of 1963 and the Department of Corrections reports he died at age 84 on January 30th. The Department of Corrections did not release a cause of death for Tice and has not returned a request from Radio Iowa for that information.
