House Votes to Expand List of Capital Crimes

The House voted Thursday to expand the list of federal crimes subject to capital punishment, including major drug crimes during which someone is killed even indirectly, and to sharply limit appeals for Death Row inmates.

Opponents called the amendments too harsh and complained that members of Congress were posturing for their constituents. At one point there were sardonic shouts of “Kill! Kill! Kill!” from the Democratic side of the chamber.

“Would it be possible to bring the guillotine directly to the House floor?” Rep. David R. Obey (D-Wis.) asked sarcastically during debate on one amendment.

“This is a tough day for the Constitution,” Rep. William J. Hughes (D-N.J.), the architect of a more moderate anti-crime bill, told his colleagues.

Rep. George W. Gekas (R-Pa.) retorted that the measure has the support of everyone “from the cop on the beat to the man on the street.”

The tough law-and-order measures, pushed by Republicans and conservative Democrats, were approved as House members worked on an anti-crime bill that they hope to pass today or early next week.

Three amendments added 12 federal crimes to those that carry the death penalty. They include assassination of the President and numerous other federal officials, murder by mail bombings, terrorist bombings in planes, trains and cars if someone is killed and the murder of a federally protected witness.

The anti-crime bill backed by Hughes, chairman of the House Judiciary subcommittee on crime, already had proposed the death penalty for espionage, treason and the assassination of a President or foreign official visiting the United States. But he cautioned that too broad a list of capital crimes might invite the Supreme Court to rule such punishment unconstitutional.

The Supreme Court in 1972 invalidated all death penalty laws in place at that time. But Congress and 37 states have passed new laws since then to meet constitutional objections. Congress has established capital punishment for air piracy where a victim has died and for certain drug-related crimes, but no one yet has been put to death for such offenses.

Hughes complained that an amendment providing the death penalty in certain cases for “drug kingpins” would allow a drug defendant to be put to death if the offense contributed to a fatal auto accident.

“Are we planning to execute people just because they deal in drugs?” asked Hughes, a former prosecutor.

House members also approved, by a vote of 285 to 146, a key amendment that its sponsor, Rep. Henry J. Hyde (R--Ill.), said would prevent Death Row inmates from being allowed to “delay, delay, delay.”

The current appeals process for capital punishment cases, known as habeas corpus, allows prisoners to petition state and federal courts claiming that they were denied their constitutional rights. Some Death Row inmates have filed repeated appeals, delaying their executions for more than a decade.

Under the Hyde proposal, an inmate would have only six months after his final sentencing to file an appeal and would be limited to one state and one federal appeal.

Passage of that amendment was a victory for the Bush Adminstration, which protested an earlier Democratic version that would have set a time limit for prisoners to file appeals but also would have guaranteed them competent lawyers.

Another anti-crime measure adopted by the House would permit the continued domestic manufacture of semiautomatic assault weapons as long as all the parts are made in America.

The Bush Administration last year banned the importation of foreign-made assault weapons, but imposed no restrictions on U.S.-made weapons of an identical nature.

“These are weapons of murder,” objected Rep. Sam Gibbons (D-Fla.). “It doesn’t matter whether they’re produced in this country or in China.”