Mel Watt

Mr. WATT of North Carolina

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous consent that the demand for recorded votes on amendments Nos. 13 and 15 be withdrawn.

Mr. WATT of North Carolina

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, I just wanted to make sure that everybody understood that this must have been a terrorist attack in the district of the gentleman from New Jersey [Mr. Martini] that this terrorist bill is designed to take care of. Was it, in fact, a terrorist attack as the gentleman from Michigan [Mr. Conyers] understands it?

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote, and pending that, I make the point of order that a quorum is not present.

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself the balance of my time. Mr. Chairman, this is the height of micro-management, the Congress of the United States debating a provision that would set attorney's fees and take that discretion away from judges. Mr. Chairman, it is the height of hypocrisy for people who believe in States rights to now say that all of a sudden we are going to set attorney's fees. This amendment is not even limited to Federal cases. It is the height of inhumanity to say that a person who has his life in the balance and has not even been found guilty or innocent, has his life in the balance, we ought to be passing an amendment like this. Mr. Chairman, we ought to be ashamed if we pass this amendment. My colleagues, come to your senses and defeat this amendment today.

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Michigan [Mr. Conyers], the ranking member of the committee.

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, I would tell the gentleman, I am supporting the Barr amendment because he restores the good faith exception under the fourth amendment.

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding time to me. Mr. Chairman, let me say at the outset that I am disappointed that the gentleman from Georgia [Mr. Barr] did not include in his amendment a provision to take the habeas corpus provisions out of this bill. But he did not do that. I have to evaluate his amendment on its merits. Mr. Chairman, I want to say this to my colleagues. There is politics all over this place, on the right, on the left. But I want to tell my colleagues that the Constitution of the United States protects conservatives, protects liberals, protects moderates. The Constitution of the United States protects black people and white people and Mexican-Americans, and the whole range and array of people. To the extent that we undercut the provisions of the Constitution of the United States, we do our whole Nation a disservice. The gentleman from Georgia [Mr. Barr] is putting back in some sanity and some constitutional provisions. I think we ought to support his amendment.

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition.

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time and I as I may consume. Mr. Chairman, I think that we have already basically wiped out any rights if we passed the hebeas corpus provision that someone on death row has to defend themselves. The appropriations process is in the process of wiping out the death penalty centers which provides any semblance of legal representation to people who have been sentenced to death in our country. And here we are now trying to do even more to speed up our Nation putting people to death. We should be ashamed. There is not any other place in the judiciary or decisionmaking process where judges do not have discretion, when they have the statutory ability and right to award legal fees, to determine what a reasonable legal fees, to determine what a reasonable legal fee is or is not. So this is not different in any respect from any other area of the law. It is already virtually impossible to find lawyers who have any background in providing the kind of representation that I thought our legal system insisted that every defendant in this country ought to have. It is something that we have supported as a proposition for as long as this country has existed, the right to legal representation. Yet here we are saying, give me a novice lawyer who has no experience to defend a person whose life is on the line. We ought to be ashamed of ourselves in this body if we have gotten to this point. Let the judges continue to exercise the degree of discretion that they have had in this area. There has been no showing in the Committee on the Judiciary that that has been abused. Let us vote down this amendment. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Chairman, I would like to advise the Members that the gentlewoman from Idaho [Mrs. Chenoweth], who is a cosponsor of this amendment, is apparently en route from her district and may not make it in time for the debate. Mr. Chairman, let me just point out to my colleagues that, as the prior vote on the amendment of the gentleman from Georgia [Mr. Barr] indicated, there is a substantial division in our ranks about the extent to which we must go to protect constitutional rights and freedoms and still feel that we are making a concerted and effective effort against terrorism. It is a very, very difficult issue, and there are some of us, myself included, who believe that we cannot afford to undermine our Constitution and the rights and protections our Constitution provides to individual citizens in this country because, when we do that, we undermine the very fabric of our Nation. What has happened in this amendment is that we are trying to remove from the ambit of this bill a provision which was not in the bill which came out of the Committee on the Judiciary. The Committee on the Judiciary considered the antiterrorism bill, went through a long, drawn-out evaluation of that bill, and voted out a bill which had no provisions in it dealing with habeas corpus. Apparently, after the bill was voted out of committee, the leadership, in an effort to expand the coverage of the bill and pick up votes from various places to try to pass the bill, saw fit to add habeas corpus provisions to this bill. Habeas corpus has nothing to do with terrorism in our country. If it does, it has such a small amount to do with it that it certainly was not something that was in the contemplation of the Committee on the Judiciary. Let me explain to my colleagues that the habeas corpus provisions were put in the Constitution of the United States years and years and years ago for the purpose of protecting individual citizens and giving them the right to seek an independent review and have the court determine that their government, in some cases, was doing an injustice to them in that the government was holding them improperly. The habeas corpus language in the Constitution has no color, it has no political ideology. It is not designed to protect one group of people against other groups of people. It is designed to protect individuals, individual citizens of our country, when the government makes a mistake and puts an individual in jail improperly. It gives that individual citizen the right to seek a review by the court and have the court make an independent determination of whether the incarceration is proper or not proper. This bill, as it is currently written, not the bill that came out of the Committee on the Judiciary, but the bill that is proposed on this floor, substantially cuts back on the rights of individual citizens under habeas corpus, and I want to encourage my colleagues to vote for this amendment. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from Missouri [Mr. Volkmer]. withdrawal of demand for recorded vote on de lauro amendment

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time on this important subject, and I want to congratulate the members of the Committee on the Judiciary who have dealt with this very difficult issue over a period of time and tried to craft a bill that has a sense of balance to the in the face of a lot of emotionalism that exists on these issues. I think the chairman of our committee, Chairman Hyde, has framed the issue in this debate a little bit differently than I would frame it. He has said the issue is do we need a bill or some additional laws in the area of international terrorism? I think if you polled every Member of this body, you would get no dispute on that issue. All of us would agree that additional laws are needed to address this dynamic and changing area that we historically have not had to deal with in this country. So the issue is not do we need additional laws. The way I would frame the issue is not do we need additional laws, the question is do we need these laws that are being proposed in this particular bill. And I will submit to you that there are some very, very troubling aspects to this bill. What we are called upon to do really is to draw a balance between the need for additional laws to address terrorism and, on the other hand, the individual rights that individual citizens in the United States are guaranteed under the Constitution of the United States of America. When we are stepping across the bounds to make new laws that substantially cut back on our individual rights and freedoms in this country, then we must begin to ask the question, what price are we willing to pay in terms of our individual rights and freedoms? What price are we willing to pay as citizens of this country to make ourselves more secure? Now, let me illustrate this to you. We can build walls around everybody in this country. We can take away all of our individual rights that are guaranteed to us in the Constitution and lock everybody up whether they have committed any crime or not, and none of those people inside those walls or in those jails who have been deprived of their rights can commit any crimes. But are we willing to pay that price? Are we willing to pay that price for security? Because the more we take away our rights and lock people up without giving them due process and take away the right of habeas corpus that protects the individual citizen when the Government is engaged in some illegal act, the more we have moved toward a totalitarian society and away from the democratic society which is so important to each and every one of us. So as we listen to this debate, I encourage all of my colleagues to constantly think about what this balance ought to be. What price am I willing to pay as an individual citizen in terms of my own individual rights and freedoms and liberties and protections? What price am I willing to pay to address this issue? And if we can arrive at some appropriate balance, then that is where we ought to be going in this bill.

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself the balance of my time. Mr. Chairman, many Members of this body have asked how we could have a coalition on this issue between myself and the gentlewoman from Idaho [Mrs. Chenoweth], those people knowing of course that we are not always philosophically in tune with each other, the two of us. I want to spend the balance of my time talking about that, because I think it reflects something on this issue. The writ of habeas corpus was inserted into the Constitution of the United States to provide protections for individual citizens vis-a-vis their Government. I am not an individual who believes that the Government is constantly out to be insidious with its citizens, but sometimes the Government makes mistakes. When that occurs, individual citizens ought to have the right and the ability to petition the judicial branch of Government to have that mistake redressed. That is a proposition that is not unique to people on the left end of the political spectrum or the right end of the political spectrum or the middle of the political spectrum. It is not a proposition that is unique to black people in our country, white people in our country, or any shades between. It is a right that our U.S. Constitution provides to each and every citizen in this country. What has happened is that people in the middle have now decided that, ``Well, the government is never going to take any action that is contrary to my rights, so I do not need habeas corpus any more.'' That is what is happening in this bill. This bill essentially destroys the writ of habeas corpus in our country. What I am entreating my colleagues to do is to stand up and understand the tremendous value that this great writ provides to the citizens of this country, regardless of their political persuasions, regardless of their political beliefs. The gentlewoman from Idaho [Mrs. Chenoweth] and I are far, far apart on many, many issues, but on this one we agree with former Attorneys General Benjamin Civiletti, Edward Levi, Nicholas Katzenbach, and Elliot Richardson, the American Bar Association, and we believe that we agree with every single citizen of the United States of America that this is a right and protection in our Constitution that is worth being preserved. Please help us preserve it. Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, may I inquire who has the right to close?

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, I yield 4 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Michigan [Mr. Conyers], the ranking member of the Committee on the Judiciary.

Mr. WATT of North Carolina

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that when the Committee of the Whole resumes proceedings on the request for a recorded vote on the amendment which is the Watt-Chenoweth amendment, amendment No. 10, it may be first in order to debate the amendment for an additional 10 minutes equally divided and controlled by an opponent and a proponent of the amendment.

Mr. WATT of North Carolina

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Will the gentleman yield further?

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. And the distributor may have $10 in the bank, and the manufacturer in Prague, a multibillion-dollar industry, is making these things, and is making them dangerously, and knowing that an individual in the United States may end up being injured by them, and it is the U.S. distributor that should be left holding the bag? That is even worse as a matter of public policy, I would submit to the gentleman.

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding time to me. I assure the chairman of the committee and others that I will not take 3 minutes because I really think our colleagues want to get out of here and leave this issue behind. But I do want to respond to the chairman's comments and make sure that my colleagues understand the choices that they have. When a manufacturer in Prague manufactures a dangerous product, knowing or in reasonable judgment should know that that product is going to end up here in the United States, the question becomes whether we should protect the manufacturer in Prague or whether we should protect the individual citizen in Nebraska or North Carolina or Michigan or Illinois or Ohio, what is our responsibility and what are the public policy considerations here? I want to submit to the chairman that if that manufacturer in Prague knows or reasonably should have known that the individual citizen in Nebraska could end up being injured by that dangerous product, it is our responsibility, as Members of this Congress, to protect American citizens and not to look out for the manufacturer in Prague. So that is the choice we have got, and it is just a matter of fairness. If a manufacturer in California sends something into North Carolina and he reasonably knows or should have known that somebody in North Carolina is going to get injured, we have got a long-arm statute that can bring him down to North Carolina. There is no public policy justification for protecting that manufacturer in Prague. He is not a constituent of anybody in this body. He deserves no more protection than a U.S. manufacturer. But think about it. The citizen who lives in Nebraska certainly deserves our protection, and that is what this statute is all about.

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. He is first and foremost a citizen of the United States, and it is our obligation as Members of Congress to support and defend and protect our citizens. That is the public policy.

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Maybe he is a multimillionaire.