SIOUX CITY, Iowa, Oct. 28 (UPI) -- A federal jury in Iowa handed down the first death sentence in the state in more than 40 years.
A jury of nine women and three men Wednesday determined Dustin Honken should be put to death for the 1993 murders of 10-year-old Kandi Duncan and her 6-year-old sister, Amber, who Honken shot in the back of their heads after killing their mother, Lori Duncan, and her friend Greg Nicholson, who Honken feared would testify against him in a federal drug case, the Omaha World-Herald reported.
The last person executed in Iowa was Victor Feguer, who in 1963 became the last federal prisoner to suffer the death penalty before a federal moratorium was put into place.
The U.S. Supreme Court banned capital punishment in 1972, but Congress reinstated it in 1998. Only three federal prisoners have been executed since the '60s.
Iowa eliminated its death penalty in 1965.
