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

DATE: THURSDAY, September 23, 1993                   TAG: 9309230197
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-4   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE: WASHINGTON                                LENGTH: Short

DRUG-KING DEATH PENALTY TO BE CUT FROM CRIME BILL

At the request of Attorney General Janet Reno, congressional Democrats have dropped controversial provisions from a broad anti-crime bill that adds stiff mandatory minimum sentences for drug and gun offenses and would have imposed the death penalty on drug "kingpins."

Those measures, overwhelmingly approved by both chambers in the past, were in a House-Senate conference report that failed in the waning days of the last Congress.

But the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel, reversing a position taken under the Bush administration, challenged the constitutionality of the drug kingpin measure. The measure would permit the head of a large-scale drug organization to be executed merely for drug trafficking activities even without proof the individual caused any deaths.

- The Washington Post

by CNB