[Congressional Record Volume 146, Number 42 (Thursday, April 6, 2000)]
[House]
[Page H1944]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




     TIME FOR AN EMERGENCY NATIONAL MORATORIUM ON THE DEATH PENALTY

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Davis) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. DAVIS of Illinois. Mr. Speaker, in the United States of America, 
the land of the free in this millenium year, we have today some 2 
million people in our jails. We are 5 percent of the world's 
population, and yet 25 percent of the world's incarcerated persons.
  In an ominous echo to General Eisenhower's farewell address, we now 
have a prison industrial complex in our Nation which feeds on some 35 
billion public dollars each year to operate prisons, and more than $7 
billion on new construction for prisons each year.
  The prison industrial complex employs more than 523,000 people, 
making it the country's biggest employer after General Motors. More 
than 5 percent of the growth of our rural population is due to the 
movement of men and women to prisons located in rural America.
  Even more ominous is the growing number of men and women put to death 
by our injustice system. There are now more than 3,600 men and women on 
death row. Most ominous is the immense and persistent disparity in the 
impact of the justice system. There is a real and growing perception 
that there are two sets of rules, two standards of treatment by law 
enforcement in America, one set for whites and another quite different 
set for African-Americans, Latinos, and all who might be poor.
  In Chicago, we have had the cases of Commander John Burge, of 
Jeremiah Mearday, and off Ryan Harris and numerous others. This pattern 
of conduct is unacceptable. The perception of injustice has been 
substantiated by the stunning sequence of events which has led to 13 
death penalty convictions in Illinois being overturned over the past 
decade or so by hard evidence which demonstrated a miscarriage of 
justice.
  I am particularly concerned about a number of death penalty cases 
originally investigated by former Chicago police Commander John Burge 
or officers under his command which were based on so-called 
confessions, and other evidence which may have been coerced by torture.
  The revelations of torture, including electric shock, suffocation, 
burning, beating, and Russian roulette have been widely reported and 
independently confirmed, and have roused the indignation of the people 
of Illinois.
  The cases of Aaron Patterson and Darrell Cannon are the first of 
these cases to reach the final phases of appeal. In 1985, the then 
Chief Justice Warren Burger said, ``What business enterprise could 
conceivably succeed with the rate of recall of its products that we see 
in the `products' of our prisons?''
  The failure of our justice system not only robs individuals of life 
and liberty, but undermines our communities and our Nation. The 
failures also are an attack on our legal and social infrastructure, on 
our Constitution, and on our Nation's economic, social, and cultural 
progress.
  There is extensive historical precedent for Federal intervention in 
cases where the justice and law enforcement systems fail to provide 
equal protection under the law in general, and specifically, protection 
in instances of police misconduct against African-Americans and other 
minorities.
  It is no accident that our Department of Justice was born in 1871, 
following the Civil War, as a response to the wave of hate crime terror 
instituted by the Ku Klux Klan and where local law enforcement was 
unable or unwilling to provide justice and in some cases joined in the 
terror.
  The concerns over these and other cases have rightly led Governor 
Ryan of Illinois to declare a moratorium on the death penalty in 
Illinois and to appoint a commission to study the problem.
  Now is the time for men and women of principle to stand and demand an 
end to the cancer eating at our freedom, not tomorrow, but today, this 
hour, is the time for an immediate emergency national moratorium on the 
death penalty. I would urge the Nation to follow the suit of the 
Governor of Illinois and declare that injustice will not continue to be 
done until we find how to do it and how to do it right.

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