[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 109 (Friday, June 30, 1995)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E1386-E1387]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


  CALLING FOR A CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT TO ABOLISH THE DEATH PENALTY

                                 ______


                         HON. HENRY B. GONZALEZ

                                of texas

                    in the house of representatives

                         Friday, June 30, 1995
  Mr. GONZALEZ. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to introduce a joint 
resolution proposing a constitutional amendment to prohibit capital 
punishment within the United States. I believe that the death penalty 
is an act of vengeance veiled as an instrument of justice. Not only do 
I believe that there are independently sufficient moral objections to 
the principle of capital punishment to warrant its abolition, but I 
also know that the death penalty is meted out to the poor, to a 
disproportionate number of minorities, and does not either deter crime 
or advance justice.
  At a time when South Africa's highest court, in the first ruling of 
the new multiracial Constitutional Court, has just abolished the death 
penalty--on grounds that it is a cruel and inhumane punishment that 
does not deter crime but which does cheapen human life--as part of the 
post-apartheid quest for democratic government and a just society in 
that country, we should live up to no lower of a standard in our 
continuing effort to uphold democracy and justice in our own land.
  Violent crimes have unfortunately become a constant in our society. 
Every day people are robbed, raped, and murdered. We are surrounded by 
crime and yet feel helpless in our attempt to deter, to control, and to 
punish. The sight of any brutal homicide excites a passion within us 
that demands retributive justice. We
 have difficulty comprehending that which cannot be understood. Mr. 
Speaker, we will never comprehend the rationale of violent crime, but 
the atrocity of the crime must not cloud our judgment and we must not 
let our anger undermine the wisdom of our rationality. We cannot allow 
ourselves to punish an irrational action with an equally irrational 
retaliation--murder is wrong, whether it is committed by an individual 
or by the State.

  Violence begets violence. I cannot help but wonder if the vigilante 
executions that are becoming more frequent in our country, whereby 
citizens arm themselves and mete out capital punishment for crimes such 
as ``tagging'' as happened in California and recently in my own 
district in San Antonio, and knocking on one's front door and acting 
disorderly as happened in Louisiana, and numerous other incidents where 
property crimes are met with a lethal response, are a direct result of 
the atmosphere of violence embraced by our Federal and State 
governments as a proper response to problems. Indeed, I wonder whether 
the overall escalation of violence in our society perpetrated by 
criminals can be traced to the devaluation of human life as exhibited 
by our governments.
  The United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights states, ``No 
one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading 
treatment or punishment.'' The death penalty is torture, and numerous 
examples exist emphasizing the cruelty of the execution. Witness Jimmy 
Lee Gray, who was executed in 1983 in the Mississippi gas chamber. 
During his execution he struck his head repeatedly on a pole behind him 
and had convulsions for 8 minutes. The modernization to lethal 
injection serves only as an attempt to conceal the reality of cruel 
punishment. Witness the execution by lethal injection of James Autry in 
1984. He took 10 minutes to die, and during much of that period he was 
conscious and complaining of pain.
  Despite the obvious mental and physical trauma resulting from the 
imposition and execution of the death penalty, proponents insist that 
it fulfills some social need. This simply is not true. Studies fail to 
establish that the death penalty either has a unique value as a 
deterrent or is a more effective deterrent than life imprisonment. We 
assume that perpetrators will give greater consideration to the 
consequences of their actions if the penalty is death, but the problem 
is that we are not always dealing with rational actions. Those who 
commit violent crimes often do so in moments of passion, rage, and 
fear--times where irrationality reigns.
  Rather than act as a deterrent, some studies suggest that the death 
penalty may even have a brutalizing effect on society. For example, 
Florida and Georgia, two of the States with the most executions since 
1979, had an increase in homicides following the resumption of capital 
punishment. In 1984 in Georgia, the year after executions resumed, the 
homicide rate increased by 20 percent in a year when the national rate 
decreased by 5 percent. There
 can be no disputing the other evidence--murders have skyrocketed in 
recent years, as have State executions. The government cannot 
effectively preach against violence when we practice violence.

  The empty echo of the death penalty asks for simple retribution. 
Proponents advocate that some crimes simply deserve death. This 
argument is ludicrous. If a murderer deserves death, I ask you why then 
do we not burn the arsonist or rape the rapist? Our justice system does 
not provide for such punishments because society comprehends that it 
must be founded on principles different from those it condemns. How can 
we condemn killing while condoning execution?
  In practice, capital punishment has become a kind of grotesque 
lottery. It is more likely to be carried out in some States than 
others--in recent years more than half of the Nation's executions have 
occurred in two States--Texas and Florida. My home State of Texas led 
the Nation in 1993 with 17 executions, more than three times the number 
of executions in the State with the second highest rate. The death 
penalty is far more likely to be imposed against blacks than whites--
the U.S. Supreme Court has assumed the validity of evidence that in 
Georgia those who murder whites were 11 times more likely to receive 
the death sentence than those who kill blacks, and that blacks who kill 
whites were almost 3 times as likely to be executed as whites who kill 
whites. It is most likely to be imposed upon the poor and uneducated--
60 percent of death row inmates never finished high school. And even 
among those who have been sentenced to die, executions appear randomly 
imposed--in the decade since executions resumed in this country, well 
under 5 percent of the more than 2,700 death row inmates have in fact 
been put to death.
  It cannot be disputed that most death row inmates come from poverty 
and that there is a definite racial and ethnic bias to the imposition 
of the death penalty. The statistics are clear, as 92 percent of those 
executed in this country since 1976 killed white victims, although 
almost half of all homicide victims during that period were black; 
further, black defendants are many times more likely to receive the 
death sentence than are white defendants. A 1990 report of the General 
Accounting Office found that there exists ``a pattern of evidence 
indicating racial disparities in the charging, sentencing, and 
imposition of the death penalty. * * * In 82 percent of the studies, 
race of victim was found to influence the likelihood of being charged 
with capital murder or receiving the death penalty.'' Similar 
statistics can be found in my area of the country with regard to 
individuals of Mexican-American descent; in fact, similar practices 
once prevailed with regard to women. The practice was to tell the 
murderer to leave town if he killed a Mexican-American or a woman, as 
the feeling was that the murder must have been justified. We may have 
moved beyond that point, but not by much. It is as much a bias in favor 
of the ``haves'' and at the expense of the ``have-nots'' as anything 
else.
  Racial and ethnic bias is a part of our Nation's history, but
   so is bias against the poor. Clearly, the ability to secure legal 
assistance 

[[Page E1387]]
and to avail oneself of the best that the legal system has to offer is 
based on one's financial status. The National Law Journal stated in 
1990, ``Indigent defendants on trial for their lives are being 
frequently represented by ill-trained, unprepared court-appointed 
lawyers so grossly underpaid they literally cannot afford to do the job 
they know needs to be done.'' The American Bar Association has admitted 
as much.

  The legal process has historically been replete with bias, as well. 
We have a history of exclusion of jurors based on their race; now, the 
Supreme Court has sanctioned the exclusion of multi-lingual jurors if 
witnesses' testimony will be translated--this is particularly 
significant in my area of the country, in San Antonio. Further, we have 
executed juveniles--children, actually, as well as those with limited 
intelligence. Only four countries besides the United States are known 
to have executed juvenile offenders in the past decade: Bangladesh, 
Pakistan, Iraq, and Iran. That's some company to be in.
  There are moves on in Congress to speed up the execution process by 
limiting and streamlining the appeals process. But when the statistics 
show how arbitrarily the death penalty is applied, how can we make any 
changes without first assuring fairness? If the death penalty is a fair 
means of exacting retribution and punishment, then isn't fairness a 
necessary element of the imposition of capital punishment? There are no 
do-overs in this business when mistakes are made.
  The imposition of the death sentence in such an uneven way is a 
powerful argument against it. The punishment is so random, so 
disproportionately applied in a few States, that it represents 
occasional retribution, not swift or sure justice. My colleagues, I 
implore you to correct this national disgrace. Nearly all other Western 
democracies have abolished the death penalty without any ill effects; 
let us not be left behind. Let us release ourselves from the 
limitations of a barbaric tradition that serves only to undermine the 
very human rights which we seek to uphold.
  The evolution in thinking in this area has progressed in nearly all 
areas of the world except in this country, where the evolution halted 
and even began reversing itself in recent years as the Federal 
Government has moved to execute Federal prisoners and States such as 
Texas have accelerated State executions. But among our country's most 
highly-educated and high-trained legal specialists, the evolution has 
been restarted. Former Supreme Court Justices Lewis Powell and Harry 
Blackmun came to the conclusion in recent years that capital punishment 
constitutes cruel and unusual punishment. Congress should pursue the 
line of thinking espoused now by these legal scholars in recognizing 
that capital punishment is unconstitutional and that this should be 
declared in a constitutional amendment. I urge my colleagues to join me 
in this effort.


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