Conferees Adopt Crime, Gun Bill : Congress: The sweeping measure would expand the death penalty and impose a waiting period on handgun buyers. Republican senators threaten a filibuster.

Over protests by outnumbered Republicans, a Senate-House conference committee reached agreement Sunday night on a far-reaching crime bill that would expand the federal death penalty to more than 50 offenses and impose a five-day waiting period on handgun buyers.

Democrats rammed through the massive compromise measure after a fierce partisan disagreement over whether its most controversial section--changing habeas corpus procedures--would substantially curb proliferating Death Row appeals, as sought by President Bush, or permit even more.

Republicans argued that the legislation didn’t go far enough.

The bill would also toughen penalties for numerous crimes, boost spending for police, prosecutors and prisons by $3.3 billion and create a “police corps” of college students to serve as police officers in exchange for free schooling.

Although the conferees adopted the so-called “Brady waiting period” for gun buyers, they dropped a Senate-passed ban on 14 models of semiautomatic assault weapons. The conferees also scrapped a House provision requested by Bush that would have eased restrictions on the use of illegally obtained evidence in criminal trials.

The compromise bill will be considered by the full Senate and House today or Tuesday as Democratic leaders seek to send it to the President before Congress adjourns this week.

However, Republican senators threatened a filibuster to delay its passage, despite the President’s insistence last February that Congress approve a crime bill within 100 days. Several Republicans urged Bush to veto the measure if it gets to him.

“What they’ve done is a pro-criminal bill, not an anti-crime bill,” Sen. Strom Thurmond (R-S.C.) complained after the conferees adopted the measure on a straight party-line vote. The GOP conferees were handed an outline of the Democratic proposal less than an hour before debate began, prompting a protest that they were being “steamrolled.”

Democrats, virtually daring Bush to veto the bill, sought to take the offensive on the emotional crime issue, which hurt them in the 1988 elections and promises to be an important concern of voters in presidential and congressional contests next year.

“What bothers my Republican colleagues is they can’t stand it that Democrats came out with a really strong, tough crime bill,” Rep. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) declared.

The bill seeks to overcome a 1972 Supreme Court ruling that the death penalty is unconstitutional unless accompanied by procedural safeguards, including a separate sentencing trial.

The legislation would reinstate capital punishment for two dozen federal offenses--including assassination of the President, treason and espionage--and extend it to about 30 new ones.

In a provision fought by liberals as Draconian, the death penalty would be imposed on “drug kingpins” involved in large-scale trafficking, even if they did not kill anyone. In some instances, it also would apply to unintentional and accidental deaths, a significant broadening of the current requirement that a slaying must be intentional to draw the death penalty.

The conferees dropped a controversial provision authored by Sen. Alfonse M. D’Amato (R-N.Y.) that would have federalized all state crimes involving a gun that crossed state lines. The provision would have had the effect of extending the federal death penalty to 13 states that do not have the death sentence in their own laws.

The new bill would require a five-day waiting period for handgun purchases until a national system of instant background checks has been developed. The provision is a compromise between a seven-day waiting period approved by the House and a computerized instant-check plan sought by the National Rifle Assn.

The waiting period would apply to the 24 states that now lack one, but it would be dropped in those states once instant background checks are started. However, the 26 states that already have waiting periods--including California with its 15-day wait--could keep them even after tying into the national checking system.

The waiting period proposal originated in legislation named after James Brady, the former White House press secretary severely wounded in the assassination attempt on former President Ronald Reagan. Brady’s wife, Sarah, is the head of Handgun Control Inc.

The top priority of Bush and his congressional allies was to restrict habeas corpus appeals, which many Death Row inmates have used repeatedly to delay their executions for years. Such appeals are based on claims that legal errors were made during trials or investigations.

The Senate had adopted a Bush-supported plan to bar customary federal review of such appeals if state trials had been conducted “fully and fairly.” Although backed by most prosecutors, the provision was opposed by the Judicial Conference, the American Bar Assn. and the American Civil Liberties Union, among others.

Conferees instead embraced a House-passed proposal that which would give state prisoners facing the death penalty one year to file a habeas corpus petition in federal court to challenge their convictions. Each state prisoner would be limited to one petition unless there was new evidence affecting guilt or innocence or a claim of miscarriage of justice.

Democratic sponsors claimed the plan would streamline the review process, speeding executions in line with Bush’s goal. However, Republicans vehemently charged that it would be a step backward because of an “artfully crafted” provision that would allow longtime prisoners to file appeals based on any new court ruling.