[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 99 (Tuesday, July 26, 1994)]
[House]
[Page H]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: July 26, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
 MOTION TO INSTRUCT CONFEREES ON H.R. 3355, VIOLENT CRIME CONTROL AND 
                      LAW ENFORCEMENT ACT OF 1994

  Mr. GEKAS. Mr. Speaker, I offer a motion to instruct conferees on the 
bill (H.R. 3355) to amend the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets 
Act of 1968 to allow grants to increase police presence, to expand and 
improve cooperative efforts between law enforcement agencies and 
members of the community to address crime and disorder problems, and 
otherwise to enhance public safety.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Clerk will report the motion.
  The Clerk read as follows:

       Mr. Gekas moves that the managers on the part of the House, 
     at the conference on the disagreeing votes of the two Houses 
     on the bill H.R. 3355, be instructed to insist upon the House 
     passed language regarding ``Return of a Finding Concerning a 
     Sentence of Death'' contained in section 3593(e) of title VII 
     and ``Review of a Sentence of Death'' contained in section 
     3595 of such title.

                              {time}  1400

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Montgomery). The gentleman from 
Pennsylvania [Mr. Gekas] is recognized for 30 minutes in support of his 
motion.
  Mr. GEKAS. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
  Mr. Speaker, on April 14 of this year the House overwhelmingly passed 
two amendments, considered a bill in which two of my amendments were 
present. We felt good right after that vote because what it meant was 
that the death penalty portions of the crime bill were tightened up and 
that there was a better chance that they would be found to be 
constitutionally sound after those votes.
  What has taken place since--and every Member should know this, and I 
so inform the Members right here and now--the House conferees are 
prepared to offer at the crime bill conference a set of provisions that 
vitiates, erases what the House did on the floor on the Gekas 
amendments.
  Let me tell you what has happened: The Gekas amendment, which was 
approved on April 14, stated that in the bifurcated hearing, in the 
second hearing, that a jury must undertake after finding an individual 
guilty of murder in the first degree, let us say a rape/murder, the 
jury now deliberates, finds the defendants guilty of murder in the 
first degree because the individual not only killed the victim but 
raped the victim right before killing her.
  So, all right, we now have a murder conviction, murder in the first 
degree. Now the jury, under the law, has to retire to decide on the 
penalty.
  On the second hearing, that which has to do with sentencing, the 
prosecutor has a burden of showing A, B, C, D, E, F, or as many items 
as he can of aggravating factors. In the case that I just said 
hypothetically, rape/murder, he can show it was a vicious rape, 
aggravating circumstance. Two, he used a weapon, a knife at the throat 
of the victim in the beginning and aggravated her circumstance.
  Then the defense can show mitigating circumstances to the jury to 
show that the defendant was of tender years, shall we say, or did not 
have a good education when rising from youth to maturity, or X, Y, Z, 
and mitigating circumstances.
  Well, under the law as we proposed it, if the mitigating factors were 
outweighed by the aggravating factors--let me put it differently: If 
the aggravating factors outweighed the mitigating factors, then the 
jury should impose the death penalty. Vice versa: If the mitigating 
circumstances outweighed the aggravating circumstances, then the 
defendant could be found by the jury to serve life imprisonment without 
parole or life imprisonment, as the judge or jury might determine.
  Here is what the House conferees have done: Here we are, the House 
spoke on that, they reconfirmed what I just said about the aggravating 
must overweigh the mitigating, and, if so, they should find the death 
penalty. What the House conferees now are proposing to go to conference 
on, they twisted that around and said, in effect, that the jury can 
ignore the aggravating circumstances, no matter how vicious that rape/
murder was that we are discussing, no matter how many aggravating 
circumstances there are, the jury can ignore them and find life 
imprisonment for the defendant.
  Well, this makes the whole thing unconstitutional if left untouched. 
We must force, if we can, the House conferees to revert to the language 
of the Gekas amendment in order to keep it constitutionally sound.
  Why? Now, this requires a brief explanation, and I must burden the 
House with it, a brief explanation of how this arose and why it is 
unconstitutional.
  In 1972 the Supreme Court struck down the death penalty across the 
Nation in every State, in every jurisdiction, because if found that 
when a jury deliberated on life or death, like in the case that I just 
told you about, the rape/murder, they could on their own discretion, 
without guidelines, without any weighing of any factors, simply decide 
death or life. If they did not like the color of the skin of the 
defendant, they could find the death penalty. If they liked the 
individual because he smiled beautifully, they could find him for life 
imprisonment rather than the death penalty.
  Remember now, we are talking about a vicious killer who is in front 
of the jury. Before 1972 the jury could decide on whim or fancy or on 
freakishly conceived notions--and I use that word freakishly advisedly 
because that is the word used in the decision--so the Supreme Court 
said, ``We can't allow a jury without guidelines to bring in a death 
penalty or life imprisonment on their own whims; we have to strike it 
down.''
  Then they resurrected the death penalty when they approved a set of 
guidelines, like the aggravating and mitigating circumstances. If we 
allow the House conferees to go to the table with language that says 
that the defendant could be found to have life imprisonment rather than 
death on any rationale, for any reason, we are going back to the stone 
ages, before 1972. It would constitute legicide on the part of the 
conferees; that is, killing of a death penalty bill, an offense of its 
own, in my mind, legicide if we did not instruct them to resurrect the 
Gekas amendment which tightens up the constitutional requirements for 
the death penalty.
  That is No. 1 point.
  Now, No. 2, in a previous Gekas amendment, which was approved by the 
Committee on the Judiciary and found its place in the bill as it passed 
the House, that goes to the appeals process. If there is anything that 
sickens the American people, Mr. Speaker, it is the endless appeals 
that seem to be brought by people who have already been convicted of 
murder in the first degree, who has been sentenced to death and are 
awaiting execution in prison cells all over the country because we do 
not have the guts as a Congress and the Judiciary lacks the guts to go 
to the inexorable conclusion of these sentences and execute these 
vicious criminals.
  At any rate, we learned of a case, Clemons versus Mississippi, which 
found a certain procedure to be constitutional, which we inserted in 
the crime bill. This is important for the American people to 
understand. In that case, the defendant appealed his death sentence, 
saying that one of the aggravating factors that the jury found to 
impose death was invalid and, therefore, the whole thing should be 
struck down. The Supreme Court, in reviewing that case, said even if 
one of those aggravating factors should be erased or was considered by 
the jury improperly, if there remain enough other aggravating 
circumstances to outweigh the mitigating circumstances, then the death 
sentence shall stand.
  Well, we felt that should be incorporated in the bill and, luckily we 
were able to get that into the bill through the Judiciary Committee 
process.
  Now, the conferees again prepared to go to the conference table, 
taking language with them that would vitiate that and return us to a 
point where the prosecutor would have to prove that this aggravating 
circumstance should or should not be ignored, an additional burden on 
the prosecutor, further exacerbating the appeals process which we are 
striving mightily to contract here in the Congress.

                              {time}  1410

  We are trying to tighten up the appeals process so that the sentence 
of death can have some meaning, as approved by the American people, and 
it can act as a deterrent only if executions are held inexorably in due 
course. At any rate, these are the two parts of the instruction we have 
moved now to make certain that the conferees take to the conference 
table those provisions.
  Mr. Speaker, we ask for the approval of the House.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Ohio [Mr. 
Traficant] on the subject of my motion to instruct.
  Mr. TRAFICANT. Mr. Speaker, I support the gentleman's motion to 
instruct.
  We have 25,000 murders or we are approaching 25,000 murders in 
America. To tell the truth, Congress has tolerated murders, and we have 
had an awful lot of them.
  I am certainly not unlike any other Member here, because none of us 
want to go out and just instill the death penalty. The bottom line is 
that I think we have fumbled round with the issue for a long time and 
it is time to get on with it.
  I rise not only to support the motion but to speak about the process 
of what is happening around here. We seem to vote on specific important 
pieces of legislation in the House that clearly exemplify the intent of 
the House of Representatives. Then these bills go over to the other 
body and the conferees start writing a whole new bill that does not 
necessarily carry on with it the intent of the majority of those voting 
in the House. This happens time and time again, and there is only one 
way we are going to stop it. The House is going to have to begin to 
insist on its important legislative initiatives that we place in these 
bills and not take them as bargaining chips for the conferees when they 
get to the other body and then draft a bill that we cannot amend.
  I did not ask for a vote on my motion to instruct because I do not 
want to belabor the House, but so help me God, if I have to be a 
renegade around here, I am going to watch carefully what they do with 
my motion to instruct.
  Even though it is a controversial issue, I want to compliment and 
commend the gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. Gekas]. He is doing what 
has to be done, and it is time for us to clarify it. Let the American 
people know what the law is. If we are going to tolerate murders, we 
are going to keep having more of them. It is time to get on with this 
important business and support the gentleman's motion.
  Mr. Speaker, I do support the motion, I commend the gentleman from 
Pennsylvania, and I want to associate myself with his remarks.
  Mr. GEKAS. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Ohio [Mr. 
Traficant] and I now yield myself just 1 minute and then I will close.
  Mr. Speaker, I will ask the gentleman from Ohio [Mr. Traficant] to 
join with me in a ``Dear Colleague'' that I intend to send following 
the approval of this motion so that we can make sure that the conferees 
know the intent of the House. With that, I yield back the balance of my 
time, and I ask for a vote on the motion.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Montgomery). Without objection, the 
previous question is ordered on the motion to instruct.
  There was no objection.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The question is on the motion offered by the 
gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. Gekas].
  The motion was agreed to.
  A motion to reconsider was laid on the table.

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