House Passes Sweeping Anti-Crime Bill : Legislation: Measure adds 20 more federal offenses punishable by death and shortens the appellate process for condemned prisoners.

The House gave overwhelming approval Friday to a comprehensive election-year anti-crime bill after approving more than 30 amendments to shape it along lines generally favored by the Bush Administration and many law enforcement leaders.

The legislation, which must be reconciled with a crime bill passed earlier by the Senate before going to the President for his signature, adds 20 more federal crimes to those punishable by death, shortens the appellate process for state Death Row inmates, allows the continued domestic manufacture of rapid-fire assault weapons and loosens the so-called exclusionary rule banning the courtroom use of improperly seized evidence.

After amendments were debated nearly 13 hours over a two-day period, the final bill was approved by a vote of 368 to 55, with most of the “no” votes cast by liberal Democrats and members of the Congressional Black Caucus.

The bill was viewed by opponents as a stern law-and-order package permitting House members to convince voters that they are tough on crime. The House did, however, reject an effort to remove a key “racial justice” provision affecting the rights of potential Death Row inmates.

This provision allows black defendants convicted of capital crimes to introduce statistical evidence before their sentencing to demonstrate that a racial imbalance has occurred among Death Row inmates in their states. The judge must consider this in determining a sentence.

Atty. Gen. Dick Thornburgh, in a statement after passage of the bill, said that “this misguided provision” must be deleted by House and Senate conferees or the President would veto the legislation.

Thornburgh said that this section would damage enforcement of the death penalty because it “would mandate consideration of statistics concerning racial characteristics of both defendants and victims” and impose unwanted “racial quotas on our death penalty laws.”

Rep. Don Edwards (D-San Jose) told the House that criminal justice statistics show that black defendants have a three-to-four-times greater chance of being executed than whites. The racial provision “is designed to ensure fairness in implementing the death penalty,” said Edwards, who is chairman of the House Judiciary subcommittee on constitutional rights.

As the price for heading off a move by Rep. F. James Sensenbrenner Jr. (R-Wis.) to delete the provision altogether, Rep. William J. Hughes (D-N. J.), a key sponsor of the measure, successfully won House approval to water it down in hopes of meeting the Administration’s objections.

The changes voted would reduce the legal importance of racial statistics in determining a defendant’s sentence. The original provision would have required a judge to consider the statistics as proof of past bias. The new provision would reduce the weight of such statistics to simply an “inference of bias.” The revised wording would lessen the burden of proof for state prosecutors in rebutting the statistics.

Rep. Jim Slattery (D-Kan.), who argued for the provision, said the General Accounting Office had discovered that, of more than 125 executions carried out in state prisons since capital punishment was resumed in 1977, “no white man has been convicted and executed for killing a black man or any member of a minority.”

“Think about that. It’s incredible,” Slattery told his colleagues.

Aside from the racial provision, Thornburgh said that House passage of the anti-crime legislation “represents a significant step toward assisting the nation’s police and prosecutors in guaranteeing the first civil right of all Americans--the right to be safe in our homes, on our streets and in our communities.”

The House acted to expand the list of federal capital crimes to include such offenses as a mail bombing in which someone dies, the assassination of a President or one of many government officials, a terrorist bombing in which someone dies on an airplane or other forms of transportation, treason, espionage or the causing of a death in connection with a drug crime.

The House eased the exclusionary rule to permit the introduction of evidence seized without a warrant if a police officer obtained it in “good faith.”

“Let’s put the rights of law-abiding citizens ahead of a criminal’s right,” said Rep. Denny Smith (R-Ore.) in arguing for the change.

Another House-passed provision would amend the federal bankruptcy code to prohibit persons convicted of savings and loan fraud from spending ill-gotten gains on their personal homes. In such cases, it would remove the homestead exemption, a legal shelter that usually keeps a bankrupt businessman from losing his home.

“I’m getting tired of S&L; crooks who live in palatial mansions draining money from their innocent victims,” said Rep. Chalmers P. Wylie (R-Ohio), author of the provision.