
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: FRIDAY, May 25, 1990                   TAG: 9005250361
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A4   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: WASHINGTON                                LENGTH: Medium

SENATE LIMITS DEATH ROW

The Senate voted Thursday to bar the execution of mentally retarded people convicted of capital crimes under federal law but leaders gave up hope of finishing work on an omnibus crime bill this week.

"For God's sake, if you acknowledge you should not put children to death, acknowledge that you should not put to death the mentally retarded," Sen. Joseph Biden, D-Del., said as the Senate debated the crime bill.

Senators defeated 59-38 an amendment that would have limited the death penalty protection for the mentally retarded to those who don't know the difference between right and wrong.

Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell, D-Maine, had hoped to complete action on the anti-crime bill before today's scheduled start of a 10-day recess. But he abandoned that idea after 271 amendments were proposed.

Lawmakers said the raft of amendments could stall the bill. Minority Leader Bob Dole, R-Kan., said: "It seems to me there is great pressure from certain groups not to invoke cloture [to limit debate] and to kill the bill."

The Senate set a June 5 vote on whether to limit debate.

"If you don't get cloture, I think you bring it [the bill] down," Biden told reporters. "If you don't get cloture you just declare the Republicans killed the crime bill."

The vote on the issue of the death penalty for the mentally retarded came as President Bush urged Congress to approve "a good, strong anti-crime bill," but restated his opposition to curbs on semiautomatic assault weapons upheld Wednesday by the Senate.

Also Thursday, the Senate:

Dropped from the bill a provision to allow death row inmates to base appeals on statistics showing a racial discriminatory pattern within the jurisdiction they were sentenced.

Sen. Bob Graham, D-Fla., who opposed the provision, said it would "have the practical consequence of repealing capital punishment . . . because no jurisdiction can meet the standards of this proposal."

Reversed a Wednesday decision and adopted 52-46 a stringent provision designed to cut short appeals by death row inmates that can drag on for a decade or longer.

by CNB