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Death Penalty Bills Target Drug Traffickers, Terrorists

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TIMES STAFF WRITER

The Bush Administration urged lawmakers Wednesday to enact its proposal to expand the federal death penalty, but the legislation has attracted a spate of alternative measures that advocate execution of offenders ranging from drug traffickers to terrorists.

The crime subcommittee of the House Judiciary Committee debated the merits of the Comprehensive Violent Crime Control Act--introduced by House Minority Leader Bob Michel (R-Ill.) with President Bush’s blessing--as well as several competing bills that would sanction capital punishment for a variety of offenses under federal law.

State capital punishment laws would not be affected by any broadening of federal powers, which now allow the death penalty only for murders arising from drug trafficking.

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The Administration-backed bill would expand the death penalty to include presidential assassinations, murders of other federal officials such as FBI and Drug Enforcement Administration agents, mob-related “hits,” hostage-takings and mail-bombings that result in fatalities, murders of Americans by terrorists worldwide, killings by federal prisoners already serving life terms and aggravated crimes of espionage and treason.

However, the President’s plan does not authorize the death penalty for “drug kingpins,” an idea that Bush has promoted publicly.

In November, 1988, Congress approved the death penalty for murders committed in connection with drug trafficking activity. It was the first time Congress had approved capital punishment since the Supreme Court struck down the death penalty at the federal level in 1972.

“We believe that the time has come for Congress to restore an enforceable death penalty for the most heinous offenses,” Edward Dennis Jr., assistant attorney general for the Justice Department’s criminal division, said in prepared testimony before the subcommittee.

Subcommittee Chairman William J. Hughes (D-N.J.) said he hopes that the panel will be able to approve legislation to expand capital punishment, but he cautioned that any such bill must pass constitutional muster.

“We cannot just throw the death penalty at the problems” of drug abuse and terrorism, he said.

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The interest in death penalty legislation comes as House members map strategy for the fall elections. Support for capital punishment appears to be a potential plus among voters, 79% of whom favor the death penalty, according to a recent Gallup poll.

“The American people want us to have a real war on drugs--not just a political war on drugs,” Rep. Dan Burton (R-Ind.) said.

Burton has introduced legislation that would make the death penalty an option for any drug dealer caught in possession of at least 4 kilograms of cocaine, 2 kilograms of heroin or 200,000 dosages of PCP or LSD.

“Any major cocaine dealer or major crack dealer knows that he’s not only going to maim the lives of young people in this country, he knows that many are going to be killed,” Burton said.

Rep. Bill McCollum (R-Fla.) has introduced a bill authorizing a sweeping federal death penalty similar to that backed by Bush. McCollum’s measure also would authorize the death penalty for major drug figures not addressed in the President’s proposal.

Dennis, the Justice Department official, criticized a bill by Rep. James A. Traficant Jr. (D-Ohio) that would authorize capital punishment for a wide range of first-degree murder cases but does not define the bounds of federal jurisdiction. That ambiguity makes the bill “subject to serious constitutional question,” Dennis said.

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Dennis also dismissed as “counterproductive” a provision of Traficant’s bill that would fund a special unit within the Justice Department to prosecute capital offense cases only.

Traficant, a former northeastern Ohio sheriff, defended his bill before the subcommittee, recalling that one of his deputies “was brutally assassinated when I was sheriff” with a “shotgun to the stomach--blowed him away.”

“We have 20,000 murders a year in America,” he said, nearly shouting. “We do not lead the world in trade; we do not lead the world in education; we do not lead the world in health care. We lead the world in murder. We have the killing field of the world in America.”

The subcommittee also is considering separate bills to make the death penalty mandatory for drug-related killings of law enforcement personnel, to allow the death penalty for major drug traffickers and to authorize executions of terrorists who kill Americans.

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