[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 120 (Sunday, August 21, 1994)]
[Senate]
[Page S]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: August 21, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
             AMERICANS FAVOR DEATH PENALTY IN VIOLENT CASES

  (Mr. GEKAS asked and was given permission to address the House for 1 
minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. GEKAS. Mr. Speaker and Members of the House, the gentlewoman from 
Colorado [Mrs. Schroeder] is absolutely correct. Let us listen to the 
people.
  An overwhelming majority of the American people favor the imposition 
of the death penalty in appropriate heinous, deadly, violent cases like 
the Trade Center murders, explosive murders, that resulted in eight 
deaths, and no death penalty applied; for sexual rape murders, for 
robbery murders, for those kinds of things that have torn us apart as a 
society: Violence. Yet we in the House first received a death penalty 
provision in this crime bill that was unenforceable until the Gekas 
amendments were passed by the House overwhelmingly, notwithstanding the 
objection of the Democrat leadership in the Committee on the Judiciary, 
and now they have been ripped out of the death penalty provisions, 
possibly making them unconstitutional.
  Mr. Speaker, we need to listen to the American people, as everyone is 
saying, who want a proper procedure for the death penalty to allow 
juries to determine whether the death penalty is to apply for violent 
killings.

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