John Conyers

Mr. CONYERS

Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Chairman, I yield as much time as she may consume to the distinguished gentlewoman from New York (Mrs. Lowey).

Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Chairman, I am pleased to yield such time as she may consume to the gentlewoman from Michigan (Ms. Stabenow), who has worked at not only the Federal level, but at the state level as a state senator and with national organizations for many years.

Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Chairman, I give it to the gentleman and I thank him very profoundly.

Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Chairman, in some respects, this may be the most significant amendment to this legislation. It has been worked on by many Members and many organizations, and I urge its consideration, because it would add several important titles to the bill, all designed to combat violence against women. Mr. Chairman, the amendment provides grants to states for law enforcement and prosecution to combat violence against women and to encourage police departments to initiate pro-arrest policies in domestic violence cases. It provides standards, practices and training for sexual assault examinations in order to assure that the necessary forensic evidence is gathered to prosecute sexual assault cases. It has a provision designed to protect children from domestic violence and sexual assault, allowing those with legal custody or visitation rights to a child to use as a defense to the charge of parental kidnapping the fact that the child has been subject to domestic violence or sexual assault. In order, however, to maintain this defense, the domestic violence must have previously been reported to law enforcement authorities. The amendment also provides standards and training for sexual assault examinations, in order to ensure that such examinations are conducted in a uniform and professional manner that best preserves the evidence and to improve recognition of injuries suggestive of sexual assault. The Attorney General is also directed to develop a recommended protocol for these examinations. The amendment that is before us now includes a section to prevent custodial sexual assault. The problem of custodial sexual assault is an extensive one, well-documented by the Women's Rights Project of Human Rights Watch. Because correctional officers wield near absolute power over female prisoners, officers occasionally abuse that power to assault and abuse female inmates. This amendment requires the Attorney General to establish guidelines for states to initiate programs to prevent such conduct. In addition, we provide for reducing states' Byrne grant funding if they fail to give full faith and credit to the protections issued by other states. In the 1994 Crime Bill, as part of the original Violence Against Women Act, we enacted a provision requiring states to enforce the protective orders of other states. Notwithstanding, many states still refuse to enforce the protective orders of other states. What we do in this part of our amendment is put teeth into the original law by advising states that if they fail to enforce protective orders, they will lose money. I think as a result of this section that this problem will rapidly disappear. Once states realize that failure to enforce protective orders has serious financial consequences, I am confident that they will step up their enforcement efforts. In another effort to prosecute serious domestic violence offenders, this amendment contains a provision to allow the victims of Federal domestic violence to enter the Federal Witness Protection Program, if necessary. In this way, we ensure victims will be willing to testify against those who are the most serious offenders. This is a problem that I have had judges comment on more than once, about people who are afraid to go to court because they are afraid of the consequences that they had been threatened with. There are other provisions here that include a section providing civilian jurisdiction for sexual assault in domestic violence crimes committed outside of the United States by individuals accompanying the armed services, and another place where we authorize the Attorney General to develop a curricula to train law enforcement officers and prosecutors in recognizing, addressing, investigating and prosecuting elder abuse, negative and exploitation. Mr. Chairman, finally, the last title of the amendment provides research for prevention, detection and investigation of violence against women, requiring that the United States Sentencing Commission study the sentences given domestic violence defendants and to make recommendations regarding those sentences, if adjustment is necessary. This title would require the Attorney General to, again, conduct a study to examine the status of the law with respect to rape and sexual assault offenses and the effectiveness of the implementation of existing laws in addressing such crimes and protecting victims. Because the provisions contained in this are all geared to fighting those who prey on women and children, and because this amendment is drawn from the Violence against Women Act, which the gentlewoman from Maryland (Mrs. Morella) has done an outstanding job in helping us garner over 100 sponsors for, I urge all Members to support the amendment and vote in favor of the only legislation related to violence against women that will likely come through this 105th Congress. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Chairman, I rise in support of the Bass amendment and commend the gentleman. Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Chairman, would the gentleman object to hearings on this matter?

Mr. CONYERS. I am opposed to the amendment, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Chairman, again reclaiming my time, would the gentleman kindly withdraw the amendment? I will give him and his staff every courtesy and consideration in terms of increasing the penalty levels on this. I promise.

Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Chairman, I say to the gentleman from New York (Mr. Ackerman), this is the problem we have in criminal law, is that every time something sensitive happens somebody jumps up and says, let us put more sentencing on it, let us add to the penalty. Many times the persons asking to raise the penalty do not even know what the penalty is. I have been on the committee all my career. The gentleman and I have worked together all the gentleman's career. We support each other year in and year out, and yet, the gentleman never consulted me or my staff about this at all, at all. On Monday, on Monday we got a copy of what the gentleman was going to do, with no consultation. Here is the problem, since the gentleman waited until this point to put it on. The problem is, what kind of increases? We create a sentencing commission to advise us, and then we come back and pass laws telling them what they had better do. Therein lies the problem. We never had any hearings. The gentleman never came before any committee of the Committee on the Judiciary. The gentleman wrote a law, let us increase it. How much should we increase it? Well, I do not know. How much? And then another person will come along, perhaps a distinguished Member of the body, who will say, let us rachet it up some more. Then what do we do then? And someone else comes along and says, the Ackerman ratchet and the other ratchet is not enough, let us ratchet it up one more time. So what do I do? So we get into this spiral of who is the toughest on disabled victims of crime. I am getting a little sick of that. Why does the the gentleman not send it through the right process, and maybe there is a great logic residing somewhere on this that I will support it, but I cannot just support every Member sitting in his office deciding there ought to be some more sentencing imposed on a crime that they consider particularly heinous.

Mr. CONYERS. I yield to the gentleman from New York.

Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Chairman, reclaiming my time, I thank the gentleman and I know he is sincere. Does my friend from New York know how much ratcheting goes on in his amendment?

Mr. CONYERS. How much?

Mr. CONYERS. Five levels.

Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Chairman, I appreciate the response, and I am pleased to know it has been a year of working on it, but that does not take the place of hearings. We can send each other letters, as my colleagues know, every day in the week, but the point of the matter is they have to be Committee on the Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime hearings. Now it is not that the gentleman from Florida (Mr. McCollum) is sitting around with not much to do, but he has assured the gentleman of hearings. I pledge to help the gentleman get hearings. We will go see the chairman, the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Hyde), we will go to the Speaker, we will do everything we can for the gentleman, but let us not pass legislation like this.

Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Chairman, I thank the subcommittee chairman, the gentleman from Florida (Mr. McCollum) for yielding this time to me. Mr. Chairman, it is hard to oppose this amendment, but I think it is necessary that we follow the lead of the gentleman from Florida (Mr. McCollum) and have a little bit more careful hearing about it. I mean, there have been no hearings on this. The gentleman agrees that there will be hearings. He has assured the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Lofgren), and the gentleman from Florida (Mr. McCollum) has never disappointed us yet, his word has been his been his bond throughout his career. But in all due honesty, I say to the gentleman from California (Mr. Sherman) I can name some other things that we maybe ought to have hotlines for criminals on, too. So, as my colleague knows, if we are turning into the hotline society, let us do it in an orderly fashion. I mean, this is something that may have merit, but to walk up on the floor and throw this on our 434 colleagues might not be as orderly. And guess what? Some of us that are not sure about this may end up supporting the gentleman. So for that reason, as my colleagues know, we have two options. One, we can desperately inform Members when they come through for a vote on this and ask about it, and some side will win and one side will lose, or the gentleman could in his usually gentlemanly fashion withdraw the amendment and allow the ordinary processes that the gentleman from Florida (Mr. McCollum) has agreed to proceed. Mr. Chairman, I yield to the gentleman from California (Mr. Sherman) for that purpose.

Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Chairman, will the gentlewoman yield?

Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Chairman, I am delighted to yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from California (Mrs. Capps).

Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume for a colloquy with the gentleman from Florida (Mr. McCollum). In an effort to satisfy the germaneness concerns in title IV of this amendment, I deleted a reference to victim services and to change a formula for grant distribution. The long and short of this discussion is that we want to fully encompass all of the program's purposes under the current law, and we are hoping that we can keep this in mind because we had to satisfy the bottleneck requirement of parliamentary germaneness. That is where this discussion goes.

Mr. CONYERS. I am pleased to yield to the gentleman from Florida.

Mr. CONYERS. I thank the gentleman from Florida.

Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Chairman, how much time remains on our side?

Mr. CONYERS

Mr. CONYERS. I thank the gentlewoman for her comments.

Mr. CONYERS. I yield to the gentlewoman from Texas.

Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Speaker, I take the floor today to join many of my Democratic and Republican colleagues in voicing concerns about reports that the Office of the Independent Counsel, headed by Mr. Starr, is considering sending an interim report to the House concerning his investigation. Just this week, the distinguished gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Hyde), chairman of the Committee on the Judiciary, as well as several other Republican Members, including the gentleman from Louisiana (Mr. Livingston) and the distinguished Senator of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Orrin Hatch, have addressed themselves to this topic and have expressed serious reservations about the wisdom and propriety of any referral to Congress that is incomplete or unfinished. I agree with these Members of the majority as well as several of my Democratic colleagues on the Committee on the Judiciary, including the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Frank), the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Delahunt), the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Scott), the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Waters), the gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Jackson-Lee) and the gentleman from New York (Mr. Nadler) that if such a partial report were actually to be delivered prior to Mr. Starr's having completed his investigation, it could only be viewed as a partisan act intended to influence this fall's election. How else could it be viewed? The independent counsel has already sacrificed some of his credibility through his insensitivity to the many conflicts of interest, some real, some apparent, under which he has labored. The referral to Congress of an incomplete report would likely exhaust whatever remaining patience the public has for Mr. Starr's activities. Mr. Starr has previously acknowledged in one of his many interviews with the press that his duty is to uncover all the evidence, both the evidence that may tend to establish that crimes may have occurred and the evidence that would tend to suggest that allegations of wrongdoing are unfounded. It is quite obvious that Mr. Starr has not yet completed his investigation. Until he does so, simple fairness dictates that any report to the House must not precede the long-awaited conclusion of the investigation. When we passed the Independent Counsel Act, we gave the independent counsel a great deal of power to conduct investigations as he sees fit. Some think too much power. The very breadth of the investigative powers granted to Mr. Starr at the very least entitle a Congress to the fruits of a complete investigation. The statements issuing from the Office of Independent Counsel about the possibility of an interim report are simply irresponsible. After 4 years and $40 million, we are entitled to a complete report on the findings of Mr. Starr's investigation.