[Congressional Record Volume 150, Number 129 (Sunday, October 10, 2004)]
[Senate]
[Pages S11089-S11090]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[[Page S11089]]
                          JUSTICE FOR ALL ACT

 Mr. BIDEN. Mr. President, I rise today to commend the Senate 
for its actions yesterday in passing the Justice for All Act of 2004, 
bipartisan, bicameral legislation I sponsored along with Senator Hatch 
and others. And I commend the other body for swiftly acting in passing 
the same legislation last evening. I hope the bill will now be signed 
into law without delay. This is one of the most important pieces of 
legislation I have ever introduced and one of the most important things 
the Senate will consider during the 108th Congress.
  As I have said many times, DNA has become the guilty man's worst 
enemy and the innocent man's best friend. It is a two-edged sword which 
we must use to both put criminals behind bars and exonerate anyone who 
has been wrongfully convicted. I started looking at the issue of 
improved prosecution of sexual assault crimes almost two decades ago 
when I began drafting the Violence Against Women Act. This legislation 
is the next step, a way to connect the dots between the extraordinary 
strides in DNA technology and my commitment to ending violence against 
women. We must ensure that justice delayed is not justice denied.
  For 3 years now, I have called on Congress to enact this important 
legislation. In 2002, I introduced with Senator Specter, S. 2513, the 
DNA Sexual Assault Justice Act of 2002. That Senate unanimously passed 
that bill during the 107th Congress, but the House failed to act. That 
bill grew out of a series of hearing I chaired in the Judiciary 
Committee which focused on the crisis involving untested rape kits 
sitting in police evidence bins around the country, each one containing 
the key to solving a sexual assault crime and putting a rapist behind 
bars. My hearings included testimony estimating that there were 300,000 
to 500,000 untested rape kits nationwide.
  In some of the most moving testimony I have heard in my 32 years in 
this body, we listened to Debbie Smith describe the horror of being the 
victim of sexual assault, followed by an additional 6 years of terror 
while awaiting the apprehension of her rapist. As I will discuss in a 
moment, the key to Debbie's road to recovery lay in an untested rape 
kit connected to her assault. Finally, that rape kit was tested, her 
assailant was identified and convicted, and she began to find closure.
  In followup to the Senate's passage of S. 2513, I introduced at the 
start of the 108th Congress with Senator Specter S. 152, the DNA Sexual 
Assault Justice Act of 2003. That legislation built upon S. 2513 from 
the prior Congress and was again joined by over 20 bipartisan 
cosponsors. The DNA Sexual Assault Justice Act of 2003 provided the 
hundreds of millions of Federal dollars desperately needed by state and 
local crime labs around the country to clear out the backlog of 
hundreds of thousands of untested DNA evidence kits from sexual 
assaults and other violent crimes.
  An important provision of S. 152 allowed the Justice Department to 
bring ``John Doe/DNA'' indictments against an unknown or unnamed 
perpetrator of sexual assault in any case where a DNA sample from the 
suspect was recovered from a crime scene. This innovative procedure 
would allow prosecutors to investigate and indict sex crimes, even 
where the victim could not identify her assailant, thus preventing the 
statute of limitations from expiring before the perpetrator could be 
identified and charged. My ``John Doe/DNA'' indictment provision became 
law in 2003 as part of the Protect Act/Amber Alert Act, S. 151/H.R. 
1104.
  Last year, Senator Hatch and I introduced S. 1700, the Advancing 
Justice Through DNA Technology Act of 2003, which contained most of the 
key elements of S. 152. We were joined by Senators Specter, Leahy, 
DeWine and Feinstein and dozens of other cosponsors in this 
legislation. For the last year, disagreements over a specific title of 
S. 1700, the Innocence Protection Act, held up consideration of the 
bill. Members from both sides of the aisle were supportive of my DNA 
Sexual Assault Justice Act, which was included in other titles of the 
bill. I am pleased that we finally reached a compromise on the very 
important title addressing post-conviction DNA testing, which cleared 
the way to consider the entire bill. We have also added into the 
legislation important victims' right provisions, resulting in the newly 
named Justice for All Act of 2004.
  The bill we passed yesterday, a combination of the Advancing Justice 
Through DNA Technology and the victims' rights legislation, harnesses 
the power of DNA to give prompt justice to victims of sexual assault 
crimes and to free the wrongly convicted. This bill takes every 
component of DNA technology and makes it accessible and more useful to 
Federal, State and local law enforcement, to prosecutors and defense 
attorneys, to medical personnel and to victims of crime.
  Promoting and supporting DNA technology as a crime-fighting tool is 
not a new endeavor for me. A provision of my 1994 Crime Bill created 
the Combined DNA Index System, CODIS, which is an electronic database 
of DNA profiles, much like the FBI's fingerprint database. CODIS 
includes two kinds of DNA information--convicted offender DNA samples 
and DNA from crime scenes. CODIS uses the two indexes to generate 
investigative leads in crimes where biological evidence is recovered 
from the scene. In essence, CODIS facilitates the DNA match. And once 
that match is made, a crime is solved because of the incredible 
accuracy and durability of DNA evidence.
  Mr. President, 99.9 percent--that is how accurate DNA evidence is. 
Mr. President, 1 in 30 billion--those are the odds someone else 
committed a crime if a suspect's DNA matches evidence at the crime 
scene. Twenty or 30 years--that is how long DNA evidence from a crime 
scene lasts. Just ten years ago DNA analysis of evidence could have 
cost thousands of dollars and taken months; now testing one sample 
costs $40 and can take days. Ten years ago forensic scientists needed 
blood the size of a bottle cap, now DNA testing can be done on a sample 
the size of a pinhead. The changes in DNA technology are remarkable, 
and mark a sea change in how we can fight crime, particularly sexual 
assault crimes.
  The FBI reports that since 1998 the national DNA database has helped 
put away violent criminals in over 9,000 investigations in 50 states. 
How? By matching the DNA crime evidence to the DNA profiles of 
offenders. Individual success stories of DNA ``cold hits'' in sexual 
assault cases make these numbers all too real. During just the last 
several months, DNA evidence pinpointed a suspect in 3 rapes in Miami, 
Florida, caused a man to be charged in a 20-year-old Missouri rape 
case, proved critical in convicting a New York man accused of 
committing 9 rapes over a decade, helped charge a man in a 28-year-old 
San Francisco rape and homicide case, and resulted in the charges 
against a Virginia man in a 23-year-old rape case. All across this 
country, rapists and murderers are getting caught for crimes which are 
often years or even decades old. Crime solved, streets safer.
  Undoubtedly, DNA matching by comparing evidence gathered at the crime 
scene with offender samples entered on the national DNA database has 
proven to be the deciding factor in solving stranger sexual assault 
cases--it has revolutionized the criminal justice system, and brought 
closure and justice for victims. A laboratory expert testified that 
Virginia has a 48 percent hit rate because the State collects samples 
from all convicted felons and aggressively analyzes crime scene 
evidence with no backlog. This means that almost 1 out of every 2 
violent crimes could be solved by the national DNA database.
  In light of the past successes and the future potential of DNA 
evidence, the reported number of untested rape kits and other crime 
scene evidence waiting in police warehouses are simply shocking--the 
Justice Department recently estimated the number to be as many as 
500,000. One woman in particular has reminded State and Federal 
lawmakers that we cannot ignore even one rape kit sitting on a shelf 
gathering dust. That woman is Debbie Smith. In 1989, Mrs. Smith was 
taken from her home and brutally raped. There were no known suspects, 
and Mrs. Smith lived in fear of her attacker's return. Six years later, 
the Virginia crime laboratory discovered a DNA match between the rape 
scene evidence and a state prisoner's DNA sample. That ``cold hit'' 
gave Mrs. Smith her first moment of real security and closure, and 
since then she has traveled the country to

[[Page S11090]]

advocate on behalf of assault victims and champion the use of DNA to 
fight sexual assault.
  The bill approved yesterday provides over $755 million over 5 years 
to eliminate the backlog in rape kits and other crime scene evidence, 
eliminate the backlog of convicted offender samples awaiting DNA 
testing, and improve state laboratory capacity to conduct DNA testing. 
I am pleased that the backlog elimination grant program in this 
legislation is entitled, ``The Debbie Smith DNA Backlog Grants.'' It is 
a fitting tribute.
  The Justice for All Act of 2004 is a natural extension to the 
Violence Against Women Act, which required the Attorney General to 
evaluate and recommend standards for training and practice for licensed 
health care professionals performing sexual assault forensic exams. So 
I knew that any DNA bill aimed at ending sexual assault must include 
resources for sexual forensic examiners. This bill provides 
$500 million in training grants to help ensure that nurses, police and 
paramedics know how to best collect and preserve DNA evidence in sexual 
assault cases, and to help local law enforcement agencies put the DNA 
profiles of convicted felons into state and national databases.

  The bill also expands the CODIS database by mandating the inclusion 
of DNA samples from all convicted federal felons, and by permitting 
states to include the DNA samples from suspects arrested for and 
charged with a crime. At the same time, our bill retains important 
provisions to expunge DNA samples from the database for those whose 
convictions are overturned or against whom criminal charges are 
dropped. The bill also contains tough new penalties for the improper 
use or disclosure of DNA samples.
  Today's bill also makes two small, but important, amendments to the 
Violence Against Women Act. First, it amends the law to include legal 
assistance for victims of dating violence, and it amends the 
eligibility criteria for discretionary programs so that tribal domestic 
violence and sexual assault coalitions can directly receive grants 
funds, including those funds unreleased from past fiscal years.
  I am also gratified that this legislation includes the Innocence 
Protection Act, which I cosponsored last Congress with Senator Leahy. 
This section will immeasurably improve the administration of justice in 
our legal system, particularly where justice is most important, and 
where we can least afford to make mistakes--imposition of the death 
penalty. Those who support the death penalty also have a duty to ensure 
that it is fairly administered. The advent of DNA testing has provided 
us with a wealth of opportunities to make certain that we are 
prosecuting the right people. This legislation makes post-conviction 
testing to federal inmates who assert that they did not commit the 
crime for which they have been imprisoned. It also incentivizes States 
to take similar measures to ensure that individuals have a proper 
opportunity to prove their innocence. It also mandates proper 
preservation of DNA evidence so that the DNA can be tested if 
appropriate.
  As for competent counsel in death penalty cases, nobody can look me 
in the eye and tell me that our system for representation in capital 
cases works as it should. This bill will take a big step toward fixing 
that by providing money for grants to States to improve their systems 
of representation, on both the prosecution and defense side, in capital 
cases.
  In closing, I would be remiss if I did not pause to thank some of the 
many people who have helped bring about the introduction of this bill. 
In particular, I wish to thank Senator Hatch, the chairman the 
Judiciary Committee, for devoting so much time and effort to work with 
me in developing this legislation, along with his chief counsel Bruce 
Artim and his counsels Brett Tolman and Mike Volkov. I also commend 
Senator Leahy, the distinguished ranking member of the committee, and 
his chief counsel Bruce Cohen and senior counsel Julie Katzman, who 
have worked tirelessly on this bill, and is the principal sponsor of 
the Innocence Protection Act. I also thank our other principal Senate 
sponsors, including Senator Specter and his chief counsel David Brog; 
Senator DeWine, and his counsel Rob Steinbuch; and Senator Feinstein 
and her chief counsel David Hantman.

  I also commend our colleagues in the other body who led the fight in 
the House of Representatives to enact this important legislation. Their 
efforts were instrumental in achieving the final bill both bodies 
passed yesterday. Specifically, I commend Representative Sensenbrenner, 
the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, and his staff, including 
Phil Kiko, Jay Apperson, and Katy Crooks. I also thank Ranking Member 
Conyers and his staff, including Perry Applebaum and Bobby Vassar. I 
also thank Representative Delahunt for his leadership, and his counsels 
Mark Agrast and Christine Leonard.
  Finally, I thank my own staff who have worked diligently over the 
last 3 years to pass this important legislation, including Louisa 
Terrell, Jonathan Meyer, and Neil MacBride.
  Mr. President, yesterday's action by Congress were a long time 
coming, and I join my cosponsors in thanking our colleagues for passing 
this legislation. I now hope the President will quickly sign this bill 
into law, so that we can finally tackle the untested rape kits and 
start bringing hope and closure to victims of sexual assault.

                          ____________________