Makes You Sorry, Not Safe : Senate Crime Bill’s Provisions Range From Problematic to Dangerous

When the U.S. Senate gives nearly unanimous assent to a bill, one of two things might very well be involved: Either the measure is utterly without significance or it involves the self-interest of the chamber’s members.

In the case of the Omnibus Crime Bill, which the Senate passed 94-6, the latter impulse was largely at work.

The Politics: Senators, like other politicians, consult public opinion polls religiously. And all such surveys agree that crime ranks among our most severe collective anxieties. The consequences of violent crime are, after all, directly at war with our Founding Fathers’ unique contribution to human progress--the notion that the “pursuit of happiness” is a fundamental human right, worthy of protections equal to those accorded life and property. We have a right to be secure in our persons and in the aspirations we hold for our children and loved ones. Thus the questions posed by crime are precisely the sort of issues on which people have a right to look to their government for answers and leadership.

The Result: Unfortunately, the Omnibus Crime Bill provides neither. Among its 20 major provisions, only two are of undisputed merit. One is a program to give scholarships to college students willing to do local police work after graduation. The other is a doubling of the Bush Administration’s proposed aid to local law enforcement agencies to $900 million per year.

The omnibus measure’s other provisions range from problematic to dangerous. For example, its most widely heralded feature--a ban on 14 military-style assault weapons--is inferior to a similar measure already approved by the House Judiciary Committee. The Senate’s version prohibits the weapons’ import or domestic manufacture for three years. The House would permanently forbid their sale or manufacture. It also creates a national seven-day waiting period for firearms purchases.

Of the Senate bill’s many flawed provisions, none is more dangerous than its attempt to limit the constitutional right of prisoners under sentence of death to file petitions of habeas corpus in federal courts. Habeas corpus is among the most fundamental of the procedural rights esteemed by societies that draw their notions of legal equity from the tradition of Common Law. Ignoring this fact, as well as the recommendations of the Judicial Conference of the United States, the Senate voted to limit condemned prisoners to a single federal appeal within a single year--without requiring that they be adequately represented at trial or on appeal. At present, more than half of all death sentences are reversed by federal habeas corpus proceedings.

The Senate’s expansion of the federal death penalty to cover 34 different crimes is similarly ill-considered. The Times opposes capital punishment, but even strong proponents of the death penalty must pause over the Senate’s wish to execute people it calls “drug kingpins,” even though they themselves have not committed homicide. This would represent a dramatic change in legal direction.

The Senate’s approach to the savings-and-loan crisis, on the other hand, is familiar stuff in an election year. It relies mainly on dramatic expansion of the Draconian Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act. Hundreds of thousands of dollars would be paid to informers; there would be wire-taps; broad new civil seizure and forfeiture powers would be applied. In other words, all the defects that have made RICO a tool of prosecutorial abuse in cases involving everyone from Mafia dons to anti-abortion protesters now will be employed. There even will be life in prison for people called “S&L; kingpins,” which the Senate defines as someone who, in concert with at least three others, illicitly gains more than $5 million over two years. Where those numbers come from is anybody’s guess.

The Suggestion: The House Judiciary Committee hopes this week to produce its own omnibus crime legislation. The senatorial experience suggests that this delicate task would be better put off until after November’s election.

Congressional Crimestoppers The Senate crime bill passed last week-with an estimated price tag of $2 billion in 1991. The House will now work up its own version of a crime bill. A Senate-House conference will then seek to iron out differences.