John Conyers

Mr. CONYERS

Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from North Carolina [Mr. Watt], a member of the committee.

Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Chairman, I want to commend the chairman of the subcommittee for making that clarification, because we raised this briefly in the full committee, and also in my remarks. So we are talking about the fact that corporate defendants and white collar criminals would all be caught under this, as well as those who commit street crime.

Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Chairman, I yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from New York [Mr. Schumer], the distinguished ranking member of the Subcommittee on Crime, of the Committee on the Judiciary, and the former chairman that subcommittee.

Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Virginia [Mr. Scott], a distinguished member of the Subcommittee on Crime of the Committee on the Judiciary.

Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word. Mr. Chairman, I want to make it clear that on our side we strongly support the amendment of the gentleman from Vermont and commend the chairman of the majority for accepting a commonsense provision that would make victims of corporate activity able to be notified of their right to appear in court and to state their claims for restitution. I am proud to join in support of this amendment. Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Speaker, I object to the vote on the ground that a quorum is not present and make the

Mr. CONYERS. I thank the gentleman for yielding. Mr. Chairman, if you would have noticed, our colleague from North Carolina raised a very sensitive point that troubles me and I would just like the gentleman to agree that we really need to look very carefully into the matter of someone on parole or probation who is brought back into the system for not meeting his restitution order, the suspicion being that he might be unemployed or unable to pay and that there ought to be some procedure that makes sure that we have not created a mini debtors prison in the process.

Mr. CONYERS

Mr. CONYERS. I thank the gentlewoman for yielding to me. Mr. Chairman, the gentleman's, my friend's explanation is a little disingenuous. This is the mother of all warrantless searches that we have before us and will ultimately, I predict, be found unconstitutional because we put the objective reasonable good faith in the police officer, not in the magistrate. And that is the fatal flaw. So we have the gentleman from North Carolina [Mr. Watt] with a constitutional provision replacing it with what I predict will be an unconstitutional amendment.

Mr. CONYERS. No; right here on the floor.

Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Chairman, if the gentleman will yield further, this is the 104th Congress. The question has never arisen before. Let us all stay tuned.

Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Chairman, this is the fourth amendment to the Constitution. I have never remembered voting on it, Mr. Chairman, and what happens here is that the reason that he had to replace it in its entirety is that there is a great likelihood that the McCollum bill, as it is written, will subsequently be found unconstitutional itself, so we not only have our obligation to the Constitution, but we fortunately had this replaced from a provision I think is unconstitutional, and predict it will never stand court muster. Therefore, I support the gentleman as well.

Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman from Virginia for yielding. What the gentleman from Pennsylvania has proved here today is he cannot tell us why he would change the existing law, which I am codifying by amendment in the Leon case. He does not have an example, because we have already given dozens of exceptions to the exclusionary rule and there is not one he can even make up now on the floor or ever that would justify what thank my friend for yielding to me.

Mr. CONYERS. The gentleman is really saying that without the seven exceptions created by the Supreme Court, the Constitution still requires that one gets a warrant.

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

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

Mr. CONYERS. I thank the gentleman from California for his discourse, because what he has revealed is this: We have almost a dozen exceptions that come to mind, including the one by the chairman of the Committee on the Judiciary who was not aware of the fact that a law officer does not have to go get a warrant or see a magistrate if someone in public pulls a gun out. That has been tested and is hard law. But when we take the Leon case and all of the exceptions: stop and frisk, the fleeing felons, hot pursuit, plain view, good faith, arrests in public areas, what on Earth else do they want to be excluded from an exclusionary rule that would lead them not to support codifying Leon as this amendment of mine does, what other exceptions are they looking for? What they are doing is only one thing in my judgment: Transferring the test of reasonable good faith from the magistrate to the police officer. That is the one limit that I cannot go to because it in effect eviscerates whatever else is left of the exclusionary rule.

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

Mr. CONYERS

Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 1\1/2\ minutes. Mr. Chairman, I am reminded by my colleagues on the other side not to worry about what we are doing here today, that we are merely changing law that was made by the courts. However, Mr. Chairman, the Supreme Court can make the laws of the land unless we modify them. That is how the whole exclusionary rule came into the law. Therefore, let us not put some pejorative effect on Supreme Court law. Thank goodness they came up with the exclusion. The gentleman from Illinois [Mr. Hyde] says ``Don't worry, the courts will eventually catch up with illegal actions,'' but that, again, is not the point. What we are saying is that illegally seized evidence should not be part of a trial. We are not saying that people should walk out of courts. If you can make a case legally, fine. If you cannot make a case legally, that is precisely why the fourth amendment has been here for 200 years. Mr. Chairman, I yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from New York [Mr. Schumer], the former chairman of the Subcommittee on Crime and Criminal Justice of the Committee on the Judiciary.

Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Chairman, I am pleased to yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from New Jersey [Mr. Torricelli].

Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Chairman, I am pleased now to yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Missouri [Mr. Volkmer]. (Mr. VOLKMER asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 1 minute. Mr. Chairman, to the gentleman from Illinois [Mr. Hyde], our chairman, I would have him remember that the exclusionary rule was put in place to make sure that the police behave rather than allowing ``anything goes,'' and then we have years later a court decision that finds out that they did not conduct themselves in the manner that they should. That is the importance of the exclusionary rule. Mr. Chairman, to my friend from Arizona who said we want an objectively reasonable standard, but not the police officer's objectively reasonable standard. We want the magistrate's objectively reasonable standard at the front end. We do not want policemen applying court doctrine unilaterally. Mr. Chairman, I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from North Carolina [Mr. Watt], a member of the committee.

Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Chairman, this is an exceedingly important debate, one that I feel very privileged to be the ranking member on the Democratic side to advance, because we are now talking about a part of the so-called Contract With America that now inflicts affirmative harm to the Constitution. This so-called Exclusionary Rule Reform Act of 1995 attempts to keep its promise made in the Contract With America by eradicating our Constitution's higher covenant with the American people that it has maintained for over 200 years. Let us review the exclusionary rule. Started in 1914 by court decision that made no exceptions but applies only to the Federal jurisdiction, it rolled along without event until 1961, when Mapp versus Ohio then created another exception that included States as well as Federal in the application of the exclusionary rule. Then in the 1970's came two very, very important additional modifications: the plain-view doctrine, which allowed that evidence or activity going on in plain view of the officers was a reason that one would not have to go to the magistrate to get a warrant; then came the exigent- circumstances doctrine, which rationally concluded that evidence that was either in danger of being destroyed or eliminated or that put the officers at great bodily risk were also exceptions to the exclusionary rule that had been created. Notice that all of these modifications were positive and supportable for those of us, like me, who view this constitutional protection to be absolutely important. And then in 1981 came Leon versus the United States that created yet another reception, in which it dictated through the Supreme Court majority, incidentally, a Republican Supreme Court, that if good faith was used by the officer in seeking a warrant and that for reasons unknown to him at that time the warrant was invalid or defective, that the exclusionary rule would not be obtained and the evidence would be admissible into court anyway. And so today we meet here with our new majority, which are here to tell us that we are now going to codify the Leon case and make it merely a continuing part of the exclusions to the exclusionary rule that I have just recited. Well, my colleagues, this is not a codification of Leon versus the United States. I want to repeat that one more time. This bill before us, H.R. 666, is not a codification of Leon versus United States. For anyone who looks at the case will find that in Leon the officers sought and were given a warrant. They went to a magistrate and got a warrant. It turned out later that it was not a good one, and Leon said that even so, if the officer in good faith went to get a warrant and got one that was subsequently invalid for any reason, then he would be held, the evidence would be admissible and he would be held to have been operating in good faith. But the measure before us does not do that. The measure before us now permits the officer to declare on his own that he believes that he is operating in good faith, having not ever gone to a magistrate. My friends in the Committee on the Judiciary are now suggesting that this is a codification of Leon. Well, I suggest that anyone in or out of law school examining the Leon case will quickly come to the conclusion that this is not the case at all, and I think it makes a very important argument. What we are doing is going far, far beyond Leon and are moving now to dispense with the exclusionary rule in its entirety. What we are saying now is that law officers, Federal or local, that operate on their perception that they are operating in good faith will now be let off beyond the purview of the exclusionary rule. I think that this is the most dangerous damage and harm that we could work to a rule that has been a part of our Constitution for 200 years. I suggest to my colleagues that the amendment that I will offer is the only codification of Leon. What we will do is codify Leon by saying where a warrant turns out to be invalid or defective, given by a magistrate to a police officer who operates on the basis that he had a perfectly legal document, that he will be excused and his evidence will be allowed to be offered. Nothing more. And it is on that basis that I want everyone to realize that this is far more than codification. It is a complete wiping out of the exclusionary rule as we have known it throughout American history. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. (Mr. CONYERS asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)