[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 33 (Friday, March 14, 1997)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2317-S2319]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                            CRIME IN AMERICA

  Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, there are a good many issues that come to 
the floor of the Senate that cause debate between Republicans and 
Democrats. Some are partisan, some cause great rancor, but there is one 
issue that ought not ever be a partisan debate. That is the issue of 
crime and how we in our country address it.
  I come to the floor today to speak about legislation I will formally 
introduce on Monday on behalf of myself and a Republican colleague, 
Senator Craig, from Idaho. We have joined together to offer a piece of 
legislation that we introduced in the last Congress. I think this bill 
makes a great deal of sense, and I hope the Congress will consider it 
favorably in this session. As a way of describing the legislation, I 
want to address why I think legislation in this area is necessary to 
deal with the issue of crime.
  There are a lot of things in this country we can point to that 
suggest our country is headed in the right direction. Our economy is 
growing. Some would like it to grow faster, but it is growing. We are 
not in a recession. You can point to some pretty good things in our 
education system. Not many people are getting on airplanes and leaving 
our country to go to college somewhere else. If you want to go to a 
world class university, largely you would want to be in the United 
States to do that. If you want to get good health care, you do not get 
on an airplane to go elsewhere. The best health care available in the 
world is available in most cases in this county. After doubling our use 
of energy in the last 20 years, America has cleaner air and cleaner 
water than we had 20 years ago.
  So you can point to a number of things in this country that give 
cause for great optimism. But in the area of crime, I at least, and I 
think a lot of my colleagues and the American people, have a nagging 
feeling about the lack of safety and security in our country, that 
something we are doing is not working, that we seem to be on the wrong 
path. I know that some people point to crime statistics and say violent 
crime has declined. But when violent crime spikes way up and then drops 
marginally, violent crime is far too high in this country.
  Here is a crime clock. One major criminal offense occurs every 2 
seconds in our country, one violent crime every 18 seconds, one murder 
in America every 24 minutes, one forcible rape every 5 minutes in our 
country, one robbery every 54 seconds, one aggravated assault every 29 
seconds. You cannot as a citizen of this country review what is 
happening on our streets and in our neighborhoods and believe we are on 
the right track with respect to crime.
  This morning I read a piece in the Washington Post that described 
some of the concerns I have expressed before in this Chamber. It says, 
``Inmates' Early Freedom Rankles Many in Florida.''
  This article says: ``Frank O'Neal got the news that his brother's 
murderer was being given an early release from prison when his son read 
it in the Tuesday edition of the local newspaper. All around the State 
of Florida, O'Neal's experience was repeated as corrections officials 
unexpectedly granted early release to 300 murderers, rapists, robbers, 
and other violent inmates.''
  Florida required prison officials to grant inmates 20 days off for 
good behavior, 20 days off for every 30 days that they served without 
regard to their crimes on the outside or their behavior on the inside. 
As a result, 200 additional inmates will be released next Monday, and 
2,700 prisoners will eventually be set free early under this approach.
  The fellow that Mr. O'Neal heard about yesterday was a man named 
Garcia. He stabbed William O'Neal, the brother of Frank O'Neal, 36 
times. William O'Neal was a grocery store manager--stabbed 36 times 
before this fellow then stole a TV set and VCR and left him dead. Now, 
Garcia has been granted early release.
  I have talked about early release previously. Some of the things I 
have talked about have convinced me that the system itself is a system 
which just does not work.
  A couple of weeks ago there was a District of Columbia police officer 
who was murdered in Prince Georges County, MD. His name was Oliver 
Wendell Smith, Jr. He was shot three times in the back of the head 
outside of his apartment. His wallet, pistol, and badge were stolen.
  All three men now charged with this murder have long criminal 
records. One of them was free on bond on drugs and weapons charges and 
another was on pretrial release for burglary and assaulting another 
police officer. I have their records in this paper given to me by the 
police department at my request. These are people who should not have 
been on the streets to murder a policeman. These are people who should 
have been in prison. We knew who they were, but our country said go 
ahead to the streets. In Florida, 2,700 criminals will go to the 
streets.
  I talked last year about the Jonathan Hall case. A man named James 
``Buck'' Murray was sentenced to life imprisonment without parole for 
the murder of Jonathan Hall. Jonathan Hall was a 13-year-old boy from 
this area who was stabbed about 58 times and then left for dead in an 
icy pond. But when they found his body, he had grass and dirt between 
his fingers because he obviously had not immediately died from all 
those stab wounds. He, laying in that icy pond, had tried to pull 
himself out of the pond but died before he could.
  Now, let me tell you about the guy who murdered him. James ``Buck'' 
Murray, in 1970, was sent to 20 years in prison for slashing the throat 
of a cab driver, stealing a cab and leaving the driver for dead. While 
in a Virginia

[[Page S2318]]

prison, 3 years later, he abducted a young woman while on work release. 
He was then convicted of kidnaping and sentenced to 5 more years in 
prison. In 1991, he was convicted of murdering a fellow prisoner and 
sentenced to another 10 years behind bars, and in 1994, he was set free 
on mandatory parole with accumulated good time credits. A 13-year-old 
boy is dead because James ``Buck'' Murray, whom we knew to be a 
murderer, was put back on the street to live in Jonathan's 
neighborhood.
  I also have talked about Bettina Pruckmayr in this Chamber. Bettina 
was 26 years old, by all accounts a wonderful, bright young woman, an 
attorney who came to the Washington, DC, area to work. On December 16, 
a year and a half ago, she was abducted in a carjacking and driven to 
an ATM machine in Washington, DC, and then fatally stabbed. Authorities 
charged 38-year-old Leo Gonzalez Wright with the murder. He was linked 
to that crime through a bank security photo taken at the ATM machine. 
He was stopped apparently in a stolen Mustang some days afterward. Mr. 
Wright should not have been on the streets. He was previously sentenced 
to 5 to 15 years for armed robbery, sentenced to 15 to 45 years to life 
for murder, released on parole, then served 16 years on a 20-year 
minimum sentence even though his actual sentence was 20 to 60 years.
  I want to show my colleagues a chart about why these criminals are 
getting out of prison. It does not take Sherlock Holmes or Dick Tracy 
to figure out who is going to murder the next victim in our country. 
The average time spent in prison for committing a murder in America is 
just over 7 years. The average murderer spends 34 percent of their 
sentence in prison, and then is released early.
  Kidnaping? The average kidnaper spends only 40 percent of his or her 
time behind bars and is released early. Robbery? It is 39 percent.
  There is not a Member of the Senate whose life has not been touched 
by violent crime. My mother was killed in a manslaughter incident. I 
suspect that those of us who have personally been touched by violent 
crime never quite view violent crime the same way. For a family to 
receive a call, as have the families of those I have just described, to 
be told that their loved one is now dead in circumstances where you 
know that death should have been and could have been prevented, leaves 
an understanding something must change.
  I want to show my colleagues something that I hope will shock the 
daylights out of everybody. We have, right now in prisons in America, 
4,820 people serving in prison in our country for murders they 
committed while they were on parole, having been released early for 
another offense. In other words, our Government released murderers 
early, to say, ``You are done with your sentence because we give you 
time off for good behavior, so go back to the streets. We need to give 
you `good time' for good behavior because if we do not give you that we 
cannot manage you in prison.'' So the prison authorities give a carrot 
of getting out early to violent offenders so they can better manage 
them in prison, and then the question is: Who manages them when they 
hit the sidewalk? Who manages them when they are in the neighborhood? 
Who manages them on a dark block when they are prepared to commit 
another murder? These 4,820 families of murder victims have every right 
to ask this Government, to ask every State government, every judge, 
every State legislator, and, yes, the U.S. Congress, how dare you do 
this? By what right do you have the opportunity to turn out murderers 
and rapists and robbers back to our streets?
  The question is, what do we do about it? Can we, should we, will we 
do something about it? I hope so. Mr. President, 4,820 people are in 
prison for having committed murders when they should have been in 
prison, 3,890 rapists committed rapes when they should have been in 
prison, and the list goes on.
  What do we do? My proposal is very simple. By far, most of criminal 
justice is handled at the State and we do not control it. I understand 
that these decisions are made by State governments and by State 
criminal justice systems. But we have a connection to it by virtue of a 
wide range of resources that we provide to State criminal justice 
systems.
  I propose that we say to State that we want you to do the following, 
and the amount of resources that we provide to your criminal justice 
system depends on your doing it. We want you to decide that there is a 
difference in the requirement to incarcerate violent versus nonviolent 
offenders. We want you to separate offenders, nonviolent and violent, 
and for violent offenders we want everyone in this country to get a 
very simple message: If you commit a violent offense and you are 
sentenced to prison, prison is your address until the end of your term. 
No parole, no good time, no nothing. Your prison cell is your address 
until the end of your sentence. That is what I hope will happen across 
this country.
  Until we get to that point, we are going to have stories as appeared 
in the Washington Post this morning--2,700 murderers, rapists, robbers, 
and other violent criminals will be released early because they have 
earned good time while in prison. Our country must decide to send a 
message to all Americans: If you commit a violent crime, you are going 
to serve your time in prison, and there is no excuse and there is no 
way out and there is no early out. You are going to serve your time in 
prison.
  I have previously introduced legislation that also says to every 
State government in our country that if they had a violent prisoner 
behind bars and then decided that, because it is too costly to keep the 
violent prisoner there, he or she will be released early to Main 
Street, to the sidewalk, to the side street--if that particular 
prisoner then commits another crime while out on early release, that 
State government has no immunity from lawsuits from the victims. That 
State government has a responsibility to keep that violent criminal off 
the streets. If it chooses to put that violent criminal back on the 
streets early, and that violent criminal commits a crime, the State who 
put the violent criminal back on the streets should have responsibility 
to the victims.
  I must say, while I feel passionate about this issue because my 
family has experienced the tragedy of violent crime, I am blessed to 
come from a State that does not have as much violent crime as many. 
North Dakota is a wonderful State in which to live. Oh, it is a little 
cold sometimes in the winter. Yes, it snowed yesterday, it is blowing a 
little today. But it is a wonderful State with wonderful people and it 
is blessed with a lower crime rate than some areas of the country. But 
we are not immune. There is no State geographical border or boundary 
that says violent crime stops here.
  There used to be a wonderful woman named Donna Martz who would bring 
bus tours to Washington, DC. The tours would come here and come to the 
front steps of the Capitol and they would always ask us, because they 
were from North Dakota, to take a picture with them on the steps, and 
our congressional delegation would be delighted to do that. Donna was a 
wonderful and remarkable woman. On a Sunday morning, in a motel parking 
lot in Bismarck, ND, a quiet Sunday morning in a relatively crime free 
city, Donna Martz was abducted, kidnaped, put in the trunk of a car and 
driven through five or six States for a good number of days. She was 
later discovered, dead, shot to death in the desert in the southwest 
part of our country.
  From a motel parking lot on a quiet Sunday morning as Donna prepared 
to drive to her home north of Bismarck, she was instead kidnaped, put 
in the trunk of a car, taken on a ride of terror and brutally murdered.
  By whom? By a couple of folks from Pennsylvania. Strangers to the 
criminal justice system? Oh, no. People we knew were violent and just 
couldn't keep in jail. Time after time after time, you look at these 
statistics and understand that this is not some mysterious disease for 
which there is not a cure. We understand what is happening and we ought 
to understand how to respond to it. If we cannot send a message across 
this country that those who commit violent crimes need to spend their 
entire sentence in prison--and I might say to judges around this 
country, I am also a little tired of the sentences that are handed out. 
I am a little tired of the slap on the wrist. I want violent criminals 
to be treated appropriately by judges. People who

[[Page S2319]]

are inherently violent and commit violent crimes ought to go to jail 
and spend a long time in jail with a sentence that is appropriate to 
that.
  It is unforgivable in this country that the average murderer, the 
average person convicted of murder, is spending only 7 years in prison. 
That is unforgivable that our criminal justice system allows that to 
happen.
  Again, we know what to do about that if we have the will. My friend, 
Senator Craig from Idaho, and I will introduce on Monday this 
legislation, and I hope very much that my colleagues will join us in 
saying this very simple message to all the States and all the people 
involved in the criminal justice system: Distinguish between violent 
and nonviolent offenders in our criminal justice system and say to 
every American, if you commit a violent crime, understand that you are 
going to spend all of your time in jail until the day that your 
sentence ends, and you are not going to get an hour off early. There is 
no good time, no parole, no help, no hope.
  How do we do that? We do that through the resources we send to State 
and local governments that reward those States that adopt that 
provision, and, hopefully, State by State by State, we can develop a 
national policy that says to all Americans that we have begun to draw 
the line on violent crime, that we have sent a message to everyone who 
commits a violent crime that things have changed.
  Mr. President, I hope, having given this long presentation, that some 
in the Congress will cosponsor, perhaps even the Presiding Officer, 
having listened at length, will cosponsor legislation of this type, 
and, one by one by one, we will achieve enough cosponsors on a 
bipartisan basis to this bill offered by a Democrat and a Republican. 
One by one by one, we will cosponsor, vote, and create a new law that 
does something good for this country.
  Mr. President, with that, I yield the floor, and I suggest the 
absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. DASCHLE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Hagel). Without objection, it is so 
ordered.

                          ____________________