[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 148 (2002), Part 14]
[Senate]
[Pages 19022-19023]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




         DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE APPROPRIATIONS AUTHORIZATION ACT

  Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, we are considering the conference report 
on the Department of Justice Authorization Act. I would like to 
highlight a few matters in that bill that I believe are important to 
justice in America.
  I serve on the Senate Judiciary Committee and have wrestled with a 
number of these issues, both as a Federal prosecutor and as a member of 
the committee. I think there are some good things in the bill, and I 
would like to make a few points that I think are important.
  One thing I know the chairman is interested in and has been a leader 
in supporting is the Coverdell forensic science legislation, named for 
former Senator Coverdell of Georgia, who is now deceased. I know that 
Senator Miller, the Acting President pro tempore, has been instrumental 
and helpful in making this bill a reality.
  The reason it is important is this. Throughout our entire criminal 
justice system, it is my view that delay is hurting justice in America. 
Cases take far longer than necessary to reach a conclusion, and justice 
delayed is justice denied. When a criminal is caught in a significant 
drug case, dealing drugs or some other offense, and time goes by, month 
after month after month, and that person is released on bail, back in 
the community amongst maybe his friends and criminal element and others 
who are looking to see if anything is going to happen to the person who 
got caught burglarizing an automobile or home or selling drugs, and a 
year or more goes by and nothing happens--that is a problem. It 
undermines respect for law. It undermines the integrity of the criminal 
justice system. It is not right.
  We had in my State recently the worst murder in the history of 
Alabama. No one can think of a more serious one. Six people were 
murdered. The individual who murdered those people had been out on bail 
and was out on bail at that time because the chemical analysis on the 
drugs he had sold had not yet come back from the State laboratory.
  As a professional prosecutor for most of my life, nearly 15 years, I 
would say to you that on a regular basis in courts all over America, a 
delay in getting fingerprints, ballistics, drug analysis, and DNA is 
slowing down justice. It is allowing criminals to stay free. It is 
allowing people to remain under a cloud who might be found innocent 
when an analysis comes back. It is not a good situation. We need to 
highlight that, and the Coverdell bill provides States support for 
State laboratories to encourage them to get caught up and stay where 
they ought to be.
  In my view, if it takes no more than a few hours to do a laboratory 
analysis on a powder to find out if it is cocaine, why can't we get it 
back in a matter of days? I think our goal in America should not be 
weeks, it should not be months, but it should be days when these 
reports come back. It does not take more time, and it does not really 
cost more money to have a chemical analysis done today rather than 
waiting 6 months to do that chemical analysis. So I would just say that 
is important.
  I am glad we strengthened that bill with some amendments in this 
language. There are appropriations of some $35 million in the 
appropriations bill that will go along with this. We are moving in the 
right direction.
  In my view, the single greatest bottleneck in the criminal justice 
system today is the forensic capability. We are far too far behind on 
that. When you consider all the people we are hiring in police, law 
enforcement, judges, jails, sheriffs, deputies and all those, the very 
few we have on forensic work that is slowing down all of their work is 
a weakness in the system that I think ought to be fixed.
  This bill does something else that I think is important. The Boys and 
Girls Clubs in America are proven to be some of the finest agencies 
anywhere for the delivery of services, hope, and encouragement to young 
people in poor areas of our country. They have done tremendous work. I 
have visited centers in Huntsville, Mobile, and other places. I have 
talked with their leadership and studied their programs. It is a 
tremendous program.
  We are providing, through this bill, greater help to them. They are 
managing personnel and managing the money that they get efficiently, to 
get the greatest possible benefit for young people in communities all 
across America. I am glad we are doing that.
  The bill provides for additional moneys for drug courts. The first 
drug court began in Miami. Judge Goldstein and a couple of other judges 
developed a concept where many people involved with the criminal 
justice system, both with drug charges and other criminal charges could 
get help with the root of the problem, their serious drug habits. They 
believed that if those individuals were carefully monitored under the 
supervision of a judge who could order them to jail if they did not 
cooperate, improved behavior could occur, the drug use could be 
prevented or reduced, treatment could be carried out effectively, and 
our crime rates would go down.
  The numbers seem to bear that out. In fact, they cited exceedingly 
positive numbers in the early 1980s. I was a prosecutor as U.S. 
attorney in Mobile, AL. I remember participating in bringing Judge 
Goldstein up to our community to talk about it. As a result of his 
presentation, our community established a drug court which has been led 
most ably for many years by Judge Mike McMaken, a State judge there in 
Mobile County. I believe it works.
  I also think we have not fully studied drug courts to understand how 
they work and how they can be made to work better, what are the most 
effective parts of the drug court process, and what should we emphasize 
and what should we deemphasize. I had hearings on this very subject 
when I chaired the courts subcommittee of the Judiciary Committee early 
last year.
  This bill does require that the General Accounting Office conduct a 
very rigorous, scientific study of the drug courts to find out what 
works and what doesn't and to see if we can't do a better job of 
intervening in lives going bad.
  The way it works is simply this: An individual is arrested for a 
minor crime. Usually, it is the first offense. It could be drugs, or it 
could be another crime. Hopefully, when they are arrested, they are 
tested for drugs in that system because that is an important thing, in 
my view. You need to know what is driving that criminal behavior.

[[Page 19023]]

Every defendant in America arrested for any offense should be 
immediately drug tested, in my view. A lot of them have a history of 
drug problems. Immediate testing would let us know that this 
individual, arrested for whatever crime, if it is their first offense, 
has a drug problem.
  The way the drug court works is that the judge says they will not 
send them to jail, and in some cases even allow them to have their 
conviction set aside only if, over a period of months, they conduct 
themselves under the most rigorous scrutiny in a way that eliminates 
drug use or criminal activity.
  The defendant would voluntarily sign up for the drug court procedure. 
They are drug tested on a weekly basis--maybe three times a week at 
first. They report regularly to the probation officer. And on a weekly 
basis they report personally to the judge. If they come in drug 
positive, he may put them in jail for the weekend. If he believes it is 
hopeless and that they are not going to succeed in the program, he will 
send them to jail and kick them out of the drug court program. But we 
believe there is some success being found with this program.
  It is spreading all over America. More and more cities are doing it. 
When you have a tough judge, a good probation officer, and intense drug 
testing with the availability of drug treatment, it is quite often 
possible that lives can be turned around as a result of this 
intervention. It is a tough love type of program which does have the 
possibility of being successful.
  I am glad we are expanding that. I support that. I have been at the 
very beginning of this kind of program. But I don't think we know 
enough about it yet and what the key parts of it are, or what the 
program should contain or maybe what should not be a part of any drug 
court program. So the study should help us in that regard.
  We have a lot of challenges in America in our Federal court system. 
Federal judges are needed in certain districts. Our population has 
grown. Certain types of criminal activities have grown. We, obviously, 
at various points in time, have districts with surging caseloads that 
need relief in terms of the number of Federal judges we have.
  I am not one who believes we ought to just exponentially expand the 
Federal court system. I propose that we take one-half of what the 
Administrative Office of Courts requested--50-some-odd Federal judges--
and that we approve 24 Federal judges based on a strict caseload basis 
in the districts where judgeships are most needed, and where those 
cases are based on a weighing of caseload factors--not just on cases 
but weighted for how big and how difficult the cases are.
  We know, for example, that southern California has not had any relief 
for some time. It has been seeing a surge in caseload based on such 
things as immigration as well as other crimes that go into Federal 
court. They are larger numbers when you are on a border like that. This 
will provide 20 new judges--a number of them temporary. But the net 
result will be assistance to some critical districts in America, such 
as the western district of Texas, or the southern district of 
California. I think we are moving in the right direction there.
  I am also pleased that a bill that Senator Dianne Feinstein and I 
offered--the James Guelff and Chris McCurley Body Armor Act--was made a 
part of this legislation. This bill dealt with the situation in which 
violent criminals today are oftentimes better armed and better 
protected than the police. It is estimated that 25 percent of police do 
not have body armor available to them. But criminals can go out and buy 
body armor. It is a crime, for example, for a criminal to have weapons. 
A felon who possesses a gun is in violation of Federal and most State 
legal systems. But, it is not today a crime for a felon to be wearing 
body armor, or to wear body armor during the course of a crime.
  James Guelff was murdered as a result of a confrontation with an 
individual wearing body armor. Chris McCurley, a deputy sheriff in 
Alabama, was out to arrest a criminal. He entered the residence of that 
defendant and was killed in a shootout. It was discovered that the 
defendant--the criminal--premeditatedly and calculatedly waited for him 
while wearing body armor, prepared himself for a shootout, and killed 
him on that scene.
  This bill is named for James Guelff and Chris McCurley. It would add 
intense punishment to criminals who use body armor in the course of 
their criminal activity.
  It has the support of the Fraternal Order of Police, the National 
Association of Police Organizations, the Federal Law Enforcement 
Officers Association, and many other national police groups.
  I think, all in all, there are good things in this legislation. I 
wish we could have done more. I support it, and look forward to voting 
favorably on it.
  I yield the floor.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Kentucky is 
recognized.

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