Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, April 20, 1994 TAG: 9404200034
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-6 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium
The prison grants, added to the $3 billion in grants already in the bill, would increase the total spending the bill would authorize to $27.5 billion, but the grants' sponsor said the amount would be reduced later. The provision would devote 25 percent of the additional money to bonuses for states that force violent criminals to serve longer terms in prison.
"To qualify for the funds, the states must get tougher and tougher and tougher on violent criminals across this land," said Rep. Jim Chapman, D-Texas, who sponsored the measure.
On the three-strikes-and-you're-out provision, the House voted 303-126 for a Republican amendment that would make those convicted in federal court of a third serious drug offense eligible for life in prison. The legislation produced by the Judiciary Committee had focused on violent felonies, allowing a serious drug offense to count as only one of the first two "strikes."
"I take strong exception to those who deny the relationship between drugs and violent crime in our country," said Rep. Gerald Solomon, R-N.Y., who proposed the amendment. "I don't know why we're de-emphasizing this terrible scourge."
Countered House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jack Brooks, D-Texas: "This bill is designed to put violent criminals who want to kill you in jail, not to just put people who are hauling marijuana around and smoking pot in their back yard."
"If we're going to fill up our jails with people like that, then there will be much less room for the severe violent criminals" who have committed one or two offenses, said Rep. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., chairman of the Judiciary Committee's crime panel.
The Clinton administration opposed Solomon's amendment because it wanted to target "incorrigible repeat violent offenders." It supported an amendment by Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., to eliminate all drug offenses from the three-strikes language.
"I am far more convinced of the merits of this amendment than its chances for success," Frank said as he introduced his proposal immediately after Solomon's passed. The House rejected Frank's amendment by voice vote.
The Senate crime bill passed last November, like the pending House measure, gives equal weight to serious drug and violent offenses in its three-strikes provisions.
The Senate also shunned the contentious issue of the rights of death row inmates to appeal to federal courts. The House's action Tuesday to eliminate the issue from its bill brings the chamber's measure into line with the Senate bill.
By a vote of 270-159, the House eliminated language that its supporters said would have given death row inmates just one opportunity to appeal their cases to federal courts and required them to file those appeals within one year of the end of state court action, except in unusual circumstances. The amendment eliminating the language was sponsored by Rep. Henry Hyde, R-Ill.
A subsequent 256-171 rejection of a Democrat-sponsored amendment made the elimination of the language final.
"We've been down that road the last two congresses," Hyde said of efforts to change the way so-called habeas corpus petitions to federal court are handled. "Habeas corpus torpedoed the crime bill . . . Let's get a crime bill, and let's deal with habeas - which is like advanced calculus - as free standing," in a separate bill.
The new prison spending money was a compromise between Republicans who wanted to tie the money to states' achievement of what they call truth in sentencing - incarcerating violent criminals for at least 85 percent of their sentences - and state officials who recoiled at the estimated $60 billion it would cost them to make the necessary changes.
Chapman's version sets no mandated percentage of sentence to be served.
by CNB