GOP May Delete Item in ‘Contract’ : Crime: Justice officials worry that a citizens-rights provision could benefit criminal defendants. Key Republicans signal they won’t try to implement it.

WASHINGTON — Swayed by pleas from the Justice Department, influential congressional Republicans signaled Friday that they will not try to implement a provision in their “contract with America” intended to help the public defend itself against federal investigations and regulatory excesses.

The provision would have required that federal authorities give targets of investigations notification at the moment they first are suspected of wrongdoing. But a phalanx of senior Justice Department attorneys warned that the measure would sharply expand the rights of criminal defendants and take away many of the law enforcement community’s best tools.

The provision was part of a larger “citizens bill of rights” in the Republican campaign manifesto intended to give business owners and individuals more freedom from government regulation.

Leading members of the House Judiciary subcommittee on commercial and administrative law indicated their retreat from the proposal after hearing a series of examples of how federal officials would be hampered in conducting criminal and civil investigations if the initiative were to become law. One major objection by Justice Department officials is that the element of surprise would be lost in undercover operations.

Jamie Gorelick, deputy U.S. attorney general, told the panel that the requirement “would run directly counter to many of the themes in the ‘contract with America’ that some members of this subcommittee have signed.”

After the testimony, subcommittee Chairman George W. Gekas (R-Pa.) told Gorelick that “your testimony has been invaluable and I’m telling you now that your testimony is going to have an effect on our final language” in the proposed bill.

“I don’t intend to support anything that will put any kind of blemish on a crime investigation,” Gekas said.

Rep. Michael Patrick Flanagan (R-Ill.) also indicated that he does not want to see the provision become law. Both Gekas and Flanagan signed the “contract with America.”

Earlier in the hearing, Rep. Tom DeLay (R-Tex.), chief sponsor of the measure, told of a Florida man who was convicted of wetlands contamination when he moved two truckloads of dirt. He also cited the case of a farmer who faced a grand jury investigation because he stabbed a protected falcon with a pitchfork when the bird killed one of his chickens.

DeLay said that these incidents were examples of minor regulatory matters that should have been cleared up long before they reached criminal court proceedings.

“The federal government is not supposed to instill fear in people’s hearts when they imagine having to deal with it, nor is it supposed to be viewed as an adversary. And yet that is what is happening,” DeLay said.

Gorelick brought her own examples to demonstrate how the measure would seriously hamper the work of law enforcement officials. Besides expanding the rights of potential criminal defendants, she said, the measure would deter whistle-blowers from coming forward because it would allow a target to know who was “ratting him out.”

She said fundamental law enforcement weapons like wiretaps, undercover agents and sting operations would be useless if individuals knew they were under investigation.

Gorelick said other provisions of the measure are equally troubling. She said the proposal would expand the so-called Miranda rights that must be read to those under arrest and allow targets of investigations to be advised that their statements could be used against them.

In one “absurd” scenario, she said, an undercover narcotics agent could accept a drug shipment only if he first warned the suspected drug trafficker that anything he said could be used against him.

The measure also would give suspected criminals the right to confront their accusers in a formal proceeding at the start of an investigation. But, she said, no victims of gang violence would want to accuse gang members in a face-to-face meeting.

Gorelick emphasized that this part of the GOP contract--while well-intended--has the effect of bringing a “sledgehammer” down on law enforcement.

“Unlike many other provisions of the contract,” she said, “this one has never before been the subject of public debate, the subject of scholarly analysis or the subject of congressional hearings.

“To be frank, in many places its language is so obscure and ambiguous that I cannot tell you what it really means. What I can tell you is how many judges, and all defense lawyers, will try to construe it.

“And I guarantee you, you will not be happy with that construction.”

More on ‘Contract’

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