[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 153 (2007), Part 4]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page 5939]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                       HONORING J. JOSEPH CURRAN

                                 ______
                                 

                     HON. C.A. DUTCH RUPPERSBERGER

                              of maryland

                    in the house of representatives

                        Thursday, March 8, 2007

  Mr. RUPPERSBERGER. Madam Speaker, it is my great honor to rise before 
you today to salute a man who has spent many years working toward 
bettering the quality of life in the State of Maryland. Sadly, after 
almost a half-century serving the citizens of the great State of 
Maryland, J. Joseph Curran has retired from public office.
  1. Joseph Curran, Jr., served as Attorney General of Maryland from 
1987 to 2007. Mr. Curran was born in West Palm Beach, Florida, on July 
7, 1931. He attended Baltimore parochial schools, Loyola High School, 
the University of Baltimore, and the University of Baltimore School of 
Law. Mr. Curran served in the U.S. Air Force during the Korean 
conflict, with duty in Japan and Korea.
  Attorney General Curran began his career in public service in 1958 
when he was elected to the House of Delegates as a law student. In 
1962, he was elected to the State Senate. During this time, despite 
angry demonstrators picketing his home, he advocated open housing laws 
for Maryland. In 1967, Mr. Curran became chair of the Judicial 
Proceedings Committee and held that position for sixteen years.
  In the General Assembly, Mr. Curran sponsored or fought for 
significant bills, including those creating the Court of Special 
Appeals and the District Court system. He consistently supported bills 
to improve the courts and the corrections system, toughen drunk-driving 
laws, guarantee equal rights, and require handgun permits. He also 
worked to modernize Maryland's divorce and alimony laws, reform 
adoption and guardianship, and protect victims of domestic violence.
  In 1986, Mr. Curran was elected Attorney General after serving four 
years as Lieutenant Governor with Governor Harry R. Hughes. In 1990, 
1994, 1998, and 2002, he won re-election. Under Mr. Curran, the 
Attorney General's Office has been a national leader in consumer 
protection, criminal investigations, Medicaid fraud prosecution, 
securities regulation, and antitrust enforcement.
  During his tenure, Mr. Curran worked tirelessly on behalf of children 
and teens, parents, seniors, victims of domestic violence and sexual 
predators, and all Marylanders concerned about crime, gun violence, 
prescription drug abuse, and the potential impact of casino gambling.
  As Attorney General, Mr. Curran launched a variety of initiatives to 
help Maryland's children. To protect them against sexual predators, he 
championed a 2004 law making it a crime to solicit a minor by computer 
or other means to engage in unlawful sexual conduct. He also proposed 
lifetime parole supervision for sex offenders and better notification 
to communities when sex offenders are released from prison. To reduce 
teen tobacco use, he led Maryland's participation in the landmark $206 
billion national settlement with the tobacco industry, which garnered 
$4.4 billion for Maryland, and industry concessions on advertising and 
marketing cigarettes to teens. He filed suits to stop unlawful Internet 
cigarette sales and the use of hip-hop themes to target youth, and 
reached agreements with national cigarette retailers to prevent sales 
to youth. He led a multi-state initiative to encourage the motion 
picture industry to decrease smoking in youth-rated movies. To reduce 
juvenile crime, Mr. Curran issued a report on the link between 
children's exposure to media violence and youth aggression and 
delinquency, and distributed 600,000 media violence diaries to help 
parents monitor their children's consumption of media violence. Mr. 
Curran promoted juvenile crime prevention programs to help at-risk 
youth, including a mentoring program within his own office, and he 
conducted a statewide youth listening tour to make recommendations in 
his report, In Their Own Words, about how adults can improve their 
response to teens' problems.
  Mr. Curran led efforts to empower people in taking control of 
difficult decisions they may face at the end of their lives. He began 
with a groundbreaking opinion early in his tenure that a competent, 
terminally-ill patient can refuse life-sustaining treatment, and 
continued with broad educational outreach and dissemination of advanced 
directives. In 2005, he expanded that outreach by making living wills 
available in Spanish. He has issued the Nation's first comprehensive 
guide to the role and responsibilities of a health care proxy, as well 
as a report on policy issues related to Alzheimer's disease. He also 
successfully promoted legislation that created a state advisory council 
on end-of-life care, as well as legislation providing additional 
protections for Marylanders who become subjects in medical research.
  To help Marylanders without insurance, Mr. Curran created a first-of-
its-kind drug-pricing website, which allows consumers to compare retail 
prices charged by different pharmacies in Maryland for commonly used 
prescription drugs. He developed educational outreach materials to help 
seniors make good decisions about Medicare Part D, the complex federal 
prescription drug benefit.
  In a landmark 1990 case, Maryland v. Craig, Attorney General Curran 
successfully urged the U.S. Supreme Court to uphold Maryland's law 
permitting victims of child abuse to testify via one-way television. 
Also before the Supreme Court, the Attorney General successfully 
litigated Maryland v. Wilson (1997). The Attorney General argued that 
police officers, who routinely conduct traffic stops that sometime turn 
deadly, may order the passenger out of the car to allow the officer to 
safely process the traffic stop. Mr. Curran was a long-time champion of 
efforts to reduce the epidemic of gun violence. He has worked for 
better laws and resources to help law enforcement keep guns out of the 
hands of criminals, including calling for restrictions on the ownership 
of handguns and establishing a firearms trafficking unit dedicated to 
the prosecution of persons who unlawfully purchase or attempt to 
purchase firearms.
  Madam Speaker, I ask that you join with me in thanking J. Joseph 
Curran for his many years of dedicated and distinguished career in 
service to the citizens of Maryland. He will be remembered for raising 
the bar and setting the precedent for future Attorney Generals in the 
State of Maryland.

                          ____________________