Wilson Decries Debate Stalling U.S. Crime Bill

Gov. Pete Wilson on Tuesday condemned the so-called Racial Justice Act that is stalling the federal crime bill, saying it would lead to “a total frustration” on the part of prosecutors seeking the death penalty.

In a spirited session with a small group of reporters, Wilson exuded confidence about his prospects for reelection in November and indicated he would throw his shoulder into efforts by Republican moderates to delete the anti-abortion plank from the GOP platform in 1996.

“It seems to me a conservative position is that government ought to stay out of people’s personal lives to a very considerable extent,” Wilson said. “I think the absence of a plank (on abortion) from a platform is consistent with that attitude. And I think you will undoubtedly see a lot of people trying to achieve that in ’96 at the Republican convention, and I think rightly.”

Wilson’s remarks echoed recent comments by other GOP moderates such as New Jersey Gov. Christine Todd Whitman and may foreshadow a major internal Republican struggle over the party’s staunch anti-abortion stance.

But Wilson made it clear he thought the debate over abortion less important than the intensifying discussion--in California and Washington--over how to stem the tide of out-of-wedlock births, which now constitute about 30% of all births.

In criticizing the racial justice measure, Wilson, who has emphasized support of the death penalty in his campaign for reelection against Democrat Kathleen Brown, joined a chorus of law enforcement officials and Republican legislators who have voiced similar concerns.

The bill, which narrowly passed the House this spring, would allow defendants in capital cases to challenge their sentences with statistics showing that the jurisdiction sentencing them had applied the death penalty proportionately more often to minorities than to whites. The Senate has rejected the idea, which has emerged as a major point of contention in the conference committee attempting to complete the massive crime bill.

“Justice . . . should be colorblind,” Wilson said. “There should be a single question and that is the guilt of the perpetrator and whether or not special circumstances exist that warrant the death penalty.”

Wilson suggested that arguments from civil rights groups that minorities tend to receive the death penalty more than whites obscure the central issue in the crime debate.

“The victims . . . are indifferent to the color of their attacker,” he said. “They want to see them dealt with and they want to be protected. I think that is an interest that outweighs concern about whether or not there is a disproportionate number of a particular racial group who fall within the category of those convicted and sentenced to a penalty.”

Wilson was in Washington meeting with a bipartisan group of California representatives to promote a new approach to resolving conflicts between local communities and homeless organizations over the use of closed military bases.

A 1987 law, the Stewart B. McKinney Homeless Assistance Act, gives homeless advocates first crack at surplus federal land. The approach outlined by Wilson would mandate that local groups devise plans with a “reasonable” level of homeless assistance. But it would also attempt to increase the priority on using the bases for economic development.

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Times staff writer James Bornemeier contributed to this story.