Vote Shows Strong Support in Senate for Death Penalty in Drug Slayings

The Senate, responding to a wave of brutal murders carried out by drug traffickers on city streets, voted Monday to keep alive an election-year proposal requiring the death penalty for persons convicted in drug-related killings.

The 68-27 vote against a motion to table the amendment was viewed as an important test of congressional sentiment on a federal death penalty, even though the measure probably will not be adopted as part of a $299.5-billion defense spending bill now being considered in the Senate.

Wilson Backs Measure

The proposal, offered by Sens. Alfonse M. D’Amato (R-N.Y.), Pete Wilson (R-Calif.) and others, is the latest development in an election-year crusade by conservative Republicans in Congress to dramatize their willingness to get tough on illegal drug trafficking.

Although the vote demonstrated strong support for the proposal, liberal opponents of the death penalty vowed to filibuster as long as necessary to prevent the Senate from taking a final vote on the amendment.

D’Amato said that he will decide today whether to press for a cloture vote to break the threatened filibuster. He noted that Monday’s vote indicates that he would have little trouble getting the 60 votes necessary to invoke cloture.

But Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Sam Nunn (D-Ga.) sought to persuade D’Amato to withdraw his amendment on grounds that the House is unlikely to accept such a provision in the defense spending bill. Nunn argued that the D’Amato amendment should be adopted, instead, as part of an anti-drug bill that is expected to be passed by Congress later this year.

Dramatic Rise in Support

The Senate vote demonstrated a dramatic increase in support for the death penalty for drug-related killings. Just two years ago, when Congress last showed election-year enthusiasm for anti-drug legislation, the Senate voted 60 to 25 to kill a similar amendment.

Although he co-sponsored the amendment, Wilson was not present for the vote.

The amendment would permit sentences ranging from 20 years in prison to the death penalty for persons who carry out narcotics-related murders, for “drug kingpins” who order such killings and for those demonstrating “reckless indifference for human life” who participate in the killing of law enforcement officers in connection with criminal drug enterprises.

D’Amato indicated that his amendment was inspired by a number of recent drug-related killings of innocent people and police officers in the New York City area--murders that he said are “tearing up the very fabric of our society.”

‘Drug Lords Fear’ Death

“The only thing the death-dealing drug lords fear is death itself,” he said. “ . . . Let’s put a little fear into them instead of having our citizens live in fear.”

But Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.), an opponent of capital punishment, argued that the D’Amato amendment is flawed because it provides the same penalty for drug dealers who kill other drug dealers as for those who kill law enforcement officers. He noted that most of the victims of drug-related violence are drug dealers themselves.

“This society should treat killing of a drug dealer differently from the killing of a police officer,” he said.

Cites Erroneous Convictions

Levin cited a study showing that American courts wrongfully convicted 343 people in this century, 25 of whom were put to death.

“Over and over again, we have convicted the wrong people of crimes,” he said. “I oppose capital punishment because you can’t correct your mistakes.”

Another opponent of the amendment, Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.), said that the Senate should not consider the issue as part of a defense bill but instead should debate it fully in connection with anti-drug legislation. He called it “the wrong amendment at the wrong time on the wrong bill.”

Kennedy and other liberals argued also that the death penalty shows a disregard for human life. “The United States should not be in the business of taking lives,” he said.

But Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah), an advocate of the death penalty, disagreed. “Capital punishment is our society’s ultimate recognition of the sanctity of human life,” he said.