[Congressional Record Volume 146, Number 80 (Thursday, June 22, 2000)]
[Senate]
[Pages S5656-S5658]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                      THE EXECUTION OF GARY GRAHAM

  Mr. FEINGOLD. Mr. President, the Nation has been engaged in a raging 
debate in recent days on whether Gary Graham should be executed in 
Texas.
  Supporters of the death penalty, including Governor Bush, have said 
there is no conclusive proof that Texas or any State has killed an 
innocent person. But apparently Gary Graham, who had the courthouse 
doors slammed shut on his claim of innocence, won't have a chance to 
prove that he is innocent.
  I understand, at this moment, that all appeals have now been 
denied. Mr. Graham is scheduled to be executed before midnight tonight.

  Mr. President, Mr. Graham's plight symbolizes some of the most 
serious concerns with the fairness and accuracy in the administration 
of the death penalty. Don't get me wrong, Mr. Graham is not a good guy. 
He is a criminal, and, in fact, a very serious offender who deserves 
very serious punishment.
  But we need to realize what is about to happen. He is still a human 
being who is about to be executed at the hands of the State of Texas. 
This is a capital matter.
  Mr. Graham may not have committed a murder for which he is about to 
be executed. This case raised very serious issues of woefully 
incompetent trial counsel, eyewitness testimony that has never been 
heard by a jury, a conviction based on the sole testimony of just one 
eyewitness, and exculpatory ballistic testing data that was not shown 
to the jury.
  Despite the claims of those who would support the death penalty, Gary 
Graham is not alone. There are other examples of people--in places like 
Virginia, Florida and even Texas--who have been put to death in the 
face of grave doubt about their guilt. We don't have absolute proof of 
their innocence. But some day soon, if we continue to let this system 
run amok, there will be a case where an irrefutably innocent person is 
executed.
  One Governor got it right. Governor Ryan of Illinois called a halt to 
executions in his State and appointed a blue ribbon commission to study 
whether the system could be fixed. Some say, I think essentially with 
no basis, that, yes, that was the right thing to do in Illinois but 
that Illinois is an aberration. Mr. President, I don't believe for a 
minute that Illinois is an aberration when it comes to the problems 
with the administration of the death penalty in this country. Governor 
Ryan was right when he said that he wanted absolute certainty that the 
person scheduled to die is guilty. The same certainty should apply to 
the State of Texas this very evening.
  A recent study by Columbia University documented that 52 percent of 
death penalty cases in Texas were overturned on appeal during the time 
period for which the study was done. Nationwide, the Columbia study 
found an average reversal rate of nearly 7 out of 10 capital cases.
  What does the Governor of Texas say? He says he is certain that every 
single one of the over 100 people executed under his watch as Governor 
was guilty. I have heard him say this many times. He only considers two 
factors: Whether the person is guilty, and whether he or she had full 
access to the courts.
  This is a matter of life and death. They found out in Illinois that 
it is not that simple. It is not just whether the person is guilty and 
whether they had full access to the courts. I have no doubt that the 
intense media and public scrutiny of Texas and Governor Bush's 
leadership is warranted in this case. The same kind of problems are 
arising in Texas that were discovered in Illinois and that forced 
Governor Ryan to take the action he did. In Illinois, it was not the 
criminal justice system that discovered its defects, it was 
undergraduate journalism students at Northwestern University who 
uncovered some of the cases of actual innocence. One person was on 
death row 2 days from his execution and ultimately the students were 
able to prove he was actually innocent.
  The Chicago Tribune, a newspaper in Illinois, was responsible for 
some of the other proof of innocent individuals on death row, some 13 
in Illinois. It was college students. It was the press. They were 
parties outside the criminal justice system who had to point out the 
defects in the system.
  Now the same thing is happening in Texas tonight. The discussion 
should not end with media attention to this case. In fact, I was 
appalled this morning. I watch the Today Show every morning as I am 
getting up and reading the Washington Post. I felt I was watching the 
trial of a human being, a person who was about to be put to death, on a 
national television show in a brief segment between advertisements. 
This cannot be the way we administer justice in this country. In fact, 
I am very concerned about the way in which this is becoming almost a 
sideshow, somehow connected with the Presidential election.

  In fairness to the Governor of Texas and in fairness to Vice 
President Al Gore, this should not be on their head as the Presidential 
election goes forward. They should not be put in the position of having 
to make these decisions as this country comes to the conclusion as to 
who will be the next President. It is a very unseemly environment in 
which to decide whether people should live or die. We have a special 
problem, and it happens that the State with the most executions 
occurring, the State with many of the

[[Page S5657]]

executions coming up, happens to be the State of the presumptive 
Republican nominee for President.
  It is a very uncomfortable situation when at the same time all of 
these questions about the death penalty are being raised. No one can 
say that this was somehow a partisan attempt to raise the issue because 
the person who really got this issue going, who really raised the 
question, is the Governor of Illinois, the chairman of Governor George 
Bush's campaign in Illinois.
  I plead that we get this issue away from the Presidential election. 
The only way we can do that is to have a credible and honest review of 
the fairness and justice in the system by which our Nation imposes the 
sentence of death. We should do exactly what Governor Ryan did in 
Illinois throughout this country: have a moratorium, a pause, during 
which a blue ribbon panel of pro and anti-death penalty people and 
other experts examine the issue.
  We need a temporary halt to executions throughout America. Support 
for this is growing. California, more than any other State, including 
Texas, has the most inmates sitting on death row awaiting execution. In 
a poll of California residents released just today, almost two-thirds 
of Californians continue to support the use of capital punishment. But 
by a margin of nearly 4-1, the poll found that Californians favor a 
halt to executions while the death penalty is studied. I think that is 
very interesting. The vast majority still support the death penalty, 
but they do know that something is wrong and we need a pause.
  I urge my colleagues to lead the American people and join me as 
cosponsors of legislation that would put a temporary halt to executions 
and establish the National Commission on the Death Penalty, the 
National Death Penalty Moratorium Act.
  This rush to judgment concerning Gary Graham is not in keeping with 
American traditions and values of fairness and justice. I ask my 
colleagues to join in urging a pause before an innocent person is 
executed.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Kansas is recognized.
  Mr. BROWNBACK. Mr. President, I appreciate the comments of my 
colleague from Wisconsin. I agree, innocent lives should not be killed. 
We should be looking at every possible degree of evidence we possibly 
can.
  I wonder if we could also consider all the young, innocent lives that 
are killed at the same time, and somehow put together a blue ribbon 
commission to determine when life begins, and say we are not going to 
allow that to take place anymore, either.
  I was just calculating. Across the country, we have every year about 
1.2 million abortions that take place. So today there have been over 
3,000 abortions. I agree that innocent life should not be killed and we 
should do everything we possibly can to review that evidence, look at 
DNA evidence, anything we can. We should remove any sort of barriers to 
time limits on tests for DNA evidence. That is an important and good 
thing we should do.
  But can't we also consider at the same time, when does that innocent 
life begin? I think those are valid points that we should both pause 
and consider at this time.


                        NCAA GAMBLING AMENDMENT

  Mr. BROWNBACK. Mr. President, the reason for me to speak this evening 
is to comment about an amendment that Senator McCain and myself, along 
with two other Members have as well, that is pending on the DOD 
authorization bill. I am not raising the amendment tonight, but I want 
to talk about it because it has been one of some controversy. I want to 
put forward the issues of why I am so concerned about this issue. It is 
an amendment that Senator McCain, myself, and two other Members 
sponsored, Senator Edwards and Senator Voinovich. It is about college 
gambling--specifically, legalized gambling in America on college 
athletics, college sports.
  We have currently in the country, banned everywhere in America 
betting on college sports, except one State--in Nevada it is allowed.
  There is legalized betting on college sports. If someone wants to bet 
on a University of Missouri football game, if they want to bet on a 
University of Kansas basketball game, there is a legal scoreboard, 
there is a game spread on it, and there is money laid on the table. It 
is all legal.
  The handle is about $1 billion in Nevada each year betting on schools 
such as the University of Kansas, Kansas State University football, the 
Final Four. It takes place every year. That has been growing 
substantially at the level of the handle, and it is going to keep on 
growing.
  The problem is it is tarnishing our amateur athletics. It is giving a 
black eye to college sports. We are getting more and more young people 
hooked into gambling because one of the key gateways to starting 
gambling is sports betting. A high number of young people start betting 
on college sports. Our athletes are being sucked into it, and we have 
seen more cases of point shaving in the decade of the nineties by 
college athletes than the entire record of the NCAA before that.
  The famous case about Northwestern University that broke during the 
Final Four 2 years ago was a point shaving case. We had at a press 
conference Kevin Pendergast, a former Notre Dame placekicker, the 
mastermind who orchestrated the shaving case. He stated he would never 
have been able to pull off this scheme without the ability to legally 
lay a large amount of money on the Las Vegas sports books.
  He said: If I do not have that, I have to pull off two shams. I have 
to get the athletes to shave the case, and I have to sham some bookie 
as well. This way, if I can get the athletes to line up and not lose 
the game--the point is not to lose the game, just do not make the 
spread. If it is a 10-point spread, just do not make it. It is easy to 
do. A player does not have to miss a shot. Unfortunately, we have been 
learning a lot about it. Where they usually do it is on defense. Let 
your man beat you: He got by me, coach; I didn't mean to.
  You do not stand at the foul line and look at the shot and say: I am 
throwing a brick up there, when you do not normally. This is getting 
pretty sophisticated now. The player lets his opponent slip by, he 
jukes you one way, off you go: He scored on me, coach; I didn't mean 
for it to happen.
  The points were not made, the money is shaved, and away we go.
  Not only is it our athletes, but it is also our referees. This really 
should upset some people. Listen to this. I watch games and a lot of 
times I do not think the refs get it right. I would not want to have 
their job, but I get pretty irritated, particularly when it is my team 
and the call goes against it.
  A study conducted by the University of Michigan found that 84 percent 
of college referees said they had participated in some form of gambling 
since beginning their careers as referees. Nearly 40 percent also 
admitted placing bets on sporting events and 20 percent said they 
gambled on the NCAA basketball tournament.
  It gets worse. Two referees said they were aware of the spread on a 
game, and it affected the way they officiated the contest. Some were 
asked to fix games they were officiating, and others were aware of 
referees who ``did not call the game fairly because of gambling 
reasons.''
  Several weeks ago, newspaper articles from Las Vegas and Chicago 
detailed how illegal and legal gambling are sometimes connected. Even 
our referees are being pulled into this gambling situation.

  This legislation by the four sponsors was a recommendation of the 
National Gambling Impact Study Commission that met for 2 years on the 
impact of gambling. They said this seedy influence should not be 
allowed to persist in college sports and on our athletes.
  The Commerce Committee held hearings on this. I said at least provide 
a State opt-out; allow a way for the University of Kansas, Kansas State 
University, Wichita State University to get off the board so they can 
petition you so you do not bet on them.
  Currently, no one can bet on the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. It 
is illegal in Nevada to bet on a Nevada college team. They said it 
might be unseemly or it might appear to be too much influence, to which 
I thought: All right. That sounds like a legitimate reason to me. Allow 
me to get the University of Kansas and Kansas State University off.
  They said: No, we are not going to do that. We will not allow your 
legislatures to petition; we will not allow your Governors to petition 
or your

[[Page S5658]]

presidents to petition; we are going to leave them on the book because 
if you want out, there will probably be others who will want out as 
well. We do not want to let you out of this. This is a $1 billion 
handle for us, and we get a lot of business.
  The problem is, it has given a black eye to college sports. Listen to 
what some of the coaches are saying about this.
  I ask unanimous consent that a letter Senator McCain and I received 
and a list of organizations supporting this legislation be printed in 
the Record. They include, among others, the National Collegiate 
Athletic Association and the National Council on Education.
  There being no objection, the letter was ordered to be printed in the 
Record, as follows:

                                                   April 24, 2000.
     Hon. John McCain,
     Hon. Sam Brownback,
     U.S. Senate, Washington, DC.
       Dear Senators McCain and Brownback: The undersigned wish to 
     express their full endorsement for the legislation you have 
     introduced to eliminate all exceptions for legalized betting 
     on high-school, college and Olympic sports. We are grateful 
     for your enthusiastic support for the legislation and are 
     hopeful that the United States Senate will follow the lead of 
     the Commerce Committee by overwhelmingly adopting S. 2340 
     when it is considered on the Senate floor. We believe this 
     legislation will send a clear, no-nonsense message that it is 
     wrong to gamble on college students.
       The proposed legislation is especially important to our 
     community because it will:
       Eliminate the use of Nevada sports books for gain in point 
     shaving scandals.
       Eliminate the legitimacy of publishing point spreads and 
     advertising for sports tout services.
       Re-sensitize young people and the general public to the 
     illegal nature of gambling on collegiate sports.
       Reduce the numbers of people who are introduced to sports 
     gambling.
       Eliminate conflicting messages as we combat illegal sports 
     wagering that say it is okay to wager on college some places 
     but not in others.
       You have permission to use our association's name publicly 
     in support of S. 2340. We stand ready to assist in any way we 
     can to insure this important legislation's passage.
         The National Collegiate Athletic Association; The 
           American Council on Education; National Association of 
           Independent Colleges and Universities; American 
           Association of State Colleges and Universities; 
           Conference Commissioners Association; National 
           Association of Collegiate Directors of Athletics; 
           National Association of Collegiate Women Athletics 
           Administrators; National Association of Jesuit Colleges 
           and Universities; American Football Coaches 
           Association; National Association of Basketball 
           Coaches.
         American Federation of Teachers; U.S. Olympic Committee; 
           National Federation of State High School Associations; 
           American Association of Universities; Divisions I, II 
           and III Student Athlete Advisory Councils; The National 
           Football Foundation and College Hall of Fame; The 
           Atlanta Tipoff Club Naismith Awards; The American 
           Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions 
           Officers; College Golf Foundation; College Gymnastics 
           Association.
         USA Volleyball; National Field Hockey Coaches 
           Association; USA Track and Field; Team Handball; 
           National Soccer Coaches Association of America; 
           American Volleyball Coaches Association; American 
           Association of Community Colleges; Golf Coaches 
           Association of America; National Association of 
           Collegiate Marketing Administrators; Intercollegiate 
           Tennis Association.
         College Athletic Business Management Association; U.S. 
           Track Coaches Association; American Hockey Coaches 
           Association; National Fastpitch Coaches Association; 
           National Association of Gymnastics Coaches/Women; 
           International Association of Approved Basketball 
           Coaches; American Baseball Association; Women's 
           Basketball Coaches Association.
  Mr. BROWNBACK. Mr. President, one of the key coaches was Coach 
Calhoun from the University of Connecticut, U. Conn. He stated, while 
this legislation does not solve the problem, ``it is a good starting 
point.'' That is exactly what the legislation is, a beginning that will 
send a clear message to our communities and, more importantly, to our 
kids that gambling on student athletics is wrong and threatens the 
integrity of college sports.
  We are asking for a simple amendment on this authorization bill. We 
would agree to an hour of debate equally divided between both sides. I 
am willing to start tonight. I am willing to go through the night. I am 
willing to go tomorrow, Saturday to bring this issue before this body. 
It is an important matter, and it needs to come before this body. We 
seek an up-or-down vote on it.
  Some people have raised questions about it. This is the time and 
place to do it. We are ready. It is time to do it. It was voted through 
the Commerce Committee with only two dissenting votes. Let's bring it 
up. That is why Senator McCain and I are pressing so aggressively to 
get this amendment considered on the DOD authorization. We will do it 
in a limited amount of time, whenever, an up-or-down vote. Let's just 
press this issue through and see what the will of the body is.

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