[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 51 (Friday, April 19, 1996)]
[House]
[Page H3652]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                           THE ISSUE OF CRIME

  (Mr. SCARBOROUGH asked and was given permission to address the House 
for 1 minute.)
  Mr. SCARBOROUGH. Mr. Speaker, we have been talking so much about 
crime and about the prevention of crime, I am going to tell you, we are 
not going to be able to tackle the issue of crime until we get tough on 
criminals and, unfortunately, the Clinton administration continues to 
coddle criminals through the judges that they appoint.
  Mr. Speaker, I am going to tell you, being from Florida, I am 
distressed by what a Florida judge recently wrote that was appointed by 
Bill Clinton. Rosemary Barkett, a Clinton judge, voted to reduce the 
death sentence of a murderer who sent a tape to the mother of the 
murdered victim, boasting about his crime and killing her daughter. 
Judge Barkett wrote:

       The killer's impatience for change, for understanding, for 
     reconciliation matured into taking the illogical and drastic 
     action of murder. His frustration, anger and obsession of 
     injustice overcame reason. The murder victim was a symbolic 
     representation of the class which caused the perceived 
     injustices.

  She went on to say he matured into the decision of killing this 
person, then bragging about it by mailing a tape to the mother of the 
murdered victim. And so she reduced the sentence. Let me tell you over 
the next 4 years, President Clinton or President Dole will elect and 
select one out of every four Federal judges that we appoint. It does 
not matter what laws we pass in this Chamber, so long as the President 
nominates justices that coddle criminals. We have got to get tough on 
crime by pushing the existing laws that we have and not by making new 
ones.

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