Wednesday was a difficult day for The American Independent News Network, which is the larger entity that operates The Iowa Independent. Our chief executive and founder announced two of our sister sites would close and their content would be moved to The American Independent.
A recently introduced bill could have far-reaching impact on the U.S. sugar industry, including American Crystal Sugar, a farmer-owned cooperative that locked out 1,300 Midwest workers on Aug. 1.
The chairman for Herman Cain’s Iowa effort says the campaign “relied more on the word of farmers than Washington regulators” in deciding to run an ad containing claims the Environmental Protection Agency says are false.
The Iowa Senate will remain under the control of a slim 26-25 Democratic majority when it reconvenes in January 2012.
The U.S. Supreme Court has indicated it will not review the conviction and death sentences handed to an Iowa man in connection with multiple 1993 murders.
Forty-six-year-old Dustin Honken of Britt was convicted on Oct. 14, 2004, of five counts of murdering witnesses, one count of soliciting murder of additional witnesses, one count of conspiring to murder witnesses, five counts of murder in furtherance of a drug conspiracy and five counts of murder in furtherance of a continuing criminal enterprise. The jury determined Honken should die on four counts involving the premeditated murder of two young girls, Kandi Duncan, age 10, and Amber Duncan, age 6.
Honken appealed his convictions and sentences, raising multiple issues. The Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed his convictions and death sentences. Honken then filed a petition for review by the U.S. Supreme Court. The court responded this week that “the petition for writ of certiorari is denied.”
He will have one year to file a petition for post-conviction relief, a form of constitutional challenge to his convictions and sentences. The U.S. Department of Justice will not schedule an execution date until Honken exhausts any such challenge.
In 2005, Honken’s girlfriend, Angela Johnson, 45, was convicted of aiding and abetting the same murders and was also sentenced to death. Although she also requested a review from the U.S. Supreme Court, her petition was denied last year.
In a plot to foil an ongoing methamphetamine investigation, Johnson lured victims into the hands of Honken, who authorities believe ultimately completed the murders. The victims included the two young girls and their mother, Johnson’s former boyfriend and a federal witness in Honken’s pending drug trial.
Johnson remains incarcerated at the Federal Medical Center Carswell in Fort Worth, Texas, which offers specialized medical and mental health services to female offenders. Honken is on death row in a federal penitentiary in Terre Haute, Indiana, which has the only chamber for federal death penalty recipients in the U.S.
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