Senate Approves Death Penalty in Drug Killings

The Senate, moving to provide another weapon in the government’s war against drugs, voted Friday to impose the death penalty in drug-related murders ordered by narcotics kingpins.

The bill was approved, 65 to 29, after an unusually emotional debate, and sent to the House, where its fate is uncertain.

Although its chief Senate sponsor, Alfonse M. D’Amato (R-N. Y.), predicted that it would become law in this election year, he acknowledged that it could be bottled up in the House Judiciary Committee by key members who are opposed to capital punishment.

Petition May Be Needed

To force a vote on the measure, he said, supporters may have to get 218 members’ signatures on a petition to bring the bill to the House floor without committee approval--an extraordinary procedure used successfully only a few times in the last decade.

D’Amato argued that Congress must give prosecutors the death penalty provision to help them stem drug trafficking and violence.

“It’s society’s way of saying--we are going to fight back,” D’Amato said after the overwhelming vote. “Society has been victimized for too long and it has a right to say it’s outraged.”

Opponents of the bill contended that it would do little to deter drug dealers from killing one another because the death penalty already can be imposed for murder under statutes in 37 of the 50 states. D’Amato’s measure would make drug slayings a federal crime, covered by the federal death penalty, as air piracy is.

“We’ll score an election-year slam-dunk . . . but it won’t even slow down the drug problem,” said Sen. Daniel J. Evans (R-Wash.).

“Capital punishment is wrong in principle, wrong in practice and the wrong response to the epidemic of illegal drug use afflicting our nation,” said Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.), condemning the Senate’s “unseemly stampede to reassure our constituents that we are getting tough on drugs.”

However, D’Amato commanded a solid Senate majority as he beat back amendments to limit the death penalty to drug-related murders of law enforcement officers or to substitute life imprisonment without parole as the maximum punishment. He vividly described how hired killers terrorized people in a Brooklyn, N. Y., nightclub or engaged in shoot-outs in a New York City children’s playground.

Sen. Paul Simon (D-Ill.) tried unsuccessfully to limit the death penalty provision to killers of law enforcement officers in drug-related cases, but his proposal was defeated, 66 to 28.

D’Amato did accept a Kennedy amendment to strengthen jury instructions on racial discrimination and to order a government study of racial disparities in the application of capital punishment.

Under the bill, the death penalty would be authorized for drug dealers engaged in a “continuing criminal enterprise” who kill someone or substantially participate in a slaying either intentionally or with “reckless indifference” to the consequences.

Another provision would allow executions of a drug dealer who participates in the killing of a police officer, even if it is a first-time dealer who is not involved in a continuing drug enterprise.

People under 18 at the time of the offense would not be subject to execution, along with those who had a mental disability or defect that prevented them from understanding the severity of their crime.

California’s senators split on the bill. Republican Pete Wilson voted for it and Democrat Alan Cranston voted against it.