Mel Watt

Mr. WATT of North Carolina

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding. He is my colleague from North Carolina. Both of us represent different parts of the State, and I have the utmost respect for him. He has been involved in law enforcement for a number of years. I am not going to try to take issue with the fact that everybody could come to this floor and bring an example where the process has been abused.

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. I think the gentleman from Florida [Mr. McCollum] is debating a different amendment than the one I offered. I am not trying to change the standard by which somebody wins or loses ultimately. What I am trying to do is make sure that somebody who has a credible claim of innocence does not sit in jail for 30, 40, or 50 years without any remedies or rights; that somebody who has been sentenced to death does not go to the gas chamber or be put to death without being able to come into court and at least present their evidence. Once they present their evidence, the standard of whether they win or not is still going to be the same as the one that the gentleman from Florida [Mr. McCollum] has talked about. I cannot be any more blunt. I mean, the Supreme Court has said this is the exact standard, and they said it as recently as January 23, 1995. So on the last bill we were trying to codify case law. This time we are trying to keep from codifying case law, because we do not care whether somebody is innocent or guilty; we just do not want them in our court system. Mr. Chairman, I cannot believe we would stand in this body and talk about some kind of procedural technicality to put somebody to death and not give somebody the opportunity if that evidence. Have we become absolutely inhumane in our society and in our quest to deal with the crime problem in this country?

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. My amendment says that if you show that you are probably innocent, you should not have to raise a constitutional issue. If you can come into court at the outset and show there is evidence that you are probably innocent, why should we be telling somebody that they have got to raise a constitutional claim if they are probably innocent?

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. If the gentleman will yield further, I am not disputing what the gentleman says. Your bill says you have to raise a constitutional issue.

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Let me be sure that the gentleman understands my amendment because I think he has a misconception of my amendment or he has a misconception of the law. My amendment only gets the person who is filing the habeas in the courthouse. This is not the standard for determining whether he wins or loses the case. This is the standard for determining whether the court will hear the case. I say to my colleague, ``If you look at page four where I have amended the bill, it says, `An appeal may not be taken to the Court of Appeals unless certain things apply,' and that's where my amendment comes into play. It allows him to take appeal. It doesn't set a different standard for that appeal once it is taken.'' If you look on page 14, it says, ``The District Court shall only consider a claim.'' And then it spells out certain circumstances.

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

Mr. WATT

Mr. WATT. Mr. Chairman, the language is simple. It says, point blank, this is the only place you will find these words in the Constitution, there being no other reference to habeas corpus in the entire Constitution, and listen, let them resonate in this body, if they will, if anybody will listen to them. This is the Constitution of the United States that we are talking about. It simply says the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus shall not be suspended unless when in the cases of rebellion or invasion the public safety may require it. There is no rebellion or invasion. There may be a bunch of crime in the streets, but I ``ain't'' seen a rebellion and no invasion. And here we are, undermining the writ, and I say to my colleagues, ``Mind you, it doesn't say we can suspend it if we find probable cause. That's not here. That's what the language of the bill says, but that's not here in the Constitution. Nothing about probable cause. Probable cause is what we were arguing about in the last assault on the Constitution just a couple of hours ago that these conservative Members would have us do away with.'' Well, what does my amendment do? It says, ``At least, if somebody comes forward with credible evidence of innocence, at least they ought to be guaranteed the protections that our Constitution provides to us.'' And we are seeing it every day now. Advances in technology have given us DNA testing that allows us to run specific DNA testing to determine whether a person is guilty or innocent, and in a number of cases where this sophisticated technology--cases where people have been in jail for 20 years, been on death row--this DNA technology is coming forward now and saying we went back, and we checked that blood sample, or that hair strand, or that fingerprint, or that little piece of clothing, and this person could not have been the perpetrator of this crime. Yet they sat in jail. They have been subjected to facing the death penalty. Mr. Chairman, all this amendment would do is preserve that right for them to raise credible evidence of innocence. We are talking about protecting people who can come in with credible evidence of innocence at any time during the proceeding. My colleagues, I am the last person who is going to get into an argument about who is the most conservative person in this body. I think I have demonstrated, when it comes to the Constitution, though not bragging rights in my district to go home and say I am a conservative, but, my colleagues, it is a conservative principle to uphold the Constitution of the United States. This is not radical liberal stuff. This is the stuff that our country is made of. So, Mr. Chairman, I ask my colleagues, in their haste to undermine habeas in a general way, at least preserve the rights and protections to those people who can still come forward with credible evidence of their own innocence. We should never, never, ever, put a person to death in this country when they are innocent because of procedural technicalities. In the last bill they were arguing all these procedural technicalities. Well, look. Give me a break. Give the people a break. We should never put anybody to death on a procedural technicality, and that is what this bill does. It poses an additional procedural technicality.

Mr. WATT of North Carolina

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman and colleagues, we have heard, again, the Constitution of the United States is under attack in this bill. There is only one place in the United States Constitution where the words habeas corpus are written. It is Article I, section 9, clause 2, which says, ``The privilege of the writ of habeas corpus shall not be suspended unless when in cases of rebellion or invasion the public safety may require it.'' As much as I have looked for rebellion or invasion in our streets, among all the crime I have not found it. Yet here we are attempting to undermine the provision in the Constitution again. In the committee, Mrs. Schroeder brought in some evidence, a letter which was a letter of support from a number of different people and groups. And one of those groups was some people who felt strongly about supporting the Constitution because they had been involved with the Civil War issue. And the question was raised: Why would they have an interest in this? And I went back and looked, and I pointed out to the committee members that the reason that somebody who had some interest in slavery would have an interest in this bill was because the provisions, original provisions in the Constitution having to do with slavery, are in article I of the Constitution also. That provision in the Constitution says, and this is section 9, clause 1 of importation of such persons as any of the States now existing shall think proper to admit shall not be prohibited by the Congress prior to the year 1808,'' and then it goes on. My colleagues, we fought a Civil War a hundred years later in this country over this provision in the Constitution. A hundred years after the year 1808, southerners were still claiming that they had the right to bring slaves into the South. And a whole war was fought about this single line in the Constitution. And in 1 day in our Judiciary Committee, and apparently in less than 2 hours or so of debate on this floor, we are getting ready to do essentially what a civil war was fought about in our country. We are undermining a simple provision in the Constitution, not the same provision, but I would submit to you that if that language 100 years after the prohibition in the Constitution had expired, clearly based on the language was worth fighting for, surely the right of habeas corpus in this country ought to be worth fighting for. But here we are again, conservatives saying, ``This is a conservative group of people, we have a conservative Contract With America, we are conservatives, but we don't believe in the most conservative document that our country has ever had, and we would undermine it.''

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. In that section it says, ``The court shall only consider a claim under certain circumstances.'' I agree with the gentleman that this is not the standard for an ultimate disposition of the case, but it is the prevailing standard for determining whether one gets review or not. That standard was set out very recently by the court again in the case of Schlup versus Delo, January 23, 1995. This is the standard for getting a review. It is not the standard for determining whether somebody gets off or not. In that case, the court says, ``The standard requires the habeas petitioner to show that `a constitutional violation has probably resulted in the conviction of one who is actually innocent.''' That is the same language that I have picked up. So I just wanted to make sure that the gentleman understands. I am not trying to change the ultimate standard on which the person wins or loses. All this does is get the person into the courthouse so the court can evaluate the evidence.

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

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. I appreciate the gentleman yielding. Mr. Chairman, I want to make sure the gentleman is clear. This is not about whether we support the death penalty or not. There is nothing in this that deals with the death penalty. It is not about the length of appeals. It is about how you get your foot in the door to raise an issue, whether if you have credible evidence that you did not commit the crime, credible evidence of innocence, that you can go through the same process that you go through that you set up in the bill.

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

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

Mr. WATT of North Carolina

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. If the gentleman offers it, if he votes this one down, let him offer some amendment that will make this constitutional, and then maybe we can talk about supporting it, Mr. Chairman. However, do not come in here and say ``Oh, no, yesterday you struck the rest of my bill.'' This does not strike one iota of his bill, yet it is still not satisfactory to him. If he wants something, draft it and put it in and let us talk about it. That is what this House is all about. That is what we came here for. But do not be picayune with me.

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, I would say to the gentleman, offer it. I reclaim my time, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. I yield to the gentleman from Florida.

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words. Mr. Chairman, almost 24 hours ago I stood in the well of this House and I talked about an amendment that would take us back to the fourth amendment to the Constitution. Colleagues on the other side said ``No, we cannot support you, because you strike the rest of our bill out. If you would just craft this in such a way that you did not strike the rest of the bill, this would be acceptable to us.'' They voted against the wording of the fourth amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Mr. Chairman, almost 24 hours later, we are back here having essentially the same debate, different language. This language does not strike one word out of the underlying bill. All it says is it is going to be subject to the fourth amendment to the U.S. Constitution. However, again, my colleagues are back saying ``Oh, no, picky, picky, picky. I can't agree with that either, it has to be drafted some other way.'' Mr. Chairman, this is an open rule we are operating under, they say. Anybody who wants to come in and offer an amendment can offer an amendment to the other side say ``Oh, no, you have not been able to draft it in such a way that is satisfactory to us yet. There is some language out there somewhere that will satisfy us,'' but 24 hours almost has passed and they have not drafted it. All they want to do is come back in and say ``Oh, no, your language is not good enough.'' Mr. Chairman, Madison and Webster drafted the language of the fourth amendment, or whoever the Founding Fathers were who were working on that particular portion of it. I wish that these new masters of the Constitution, these master draftspersons who drafted this artistic Contract With America, would draft some language that would be satisfactory to them, that would not trample on the Founding Fathers' language. It is not doing my constituents or the American people any good to say ``Oh, no, this is not good enough, we need a comma here or a period there, or a T crossed here or an I dotted there.'' If they believe in the Constitution, draft the language, give it to us. I invited them to do it yesterday. I have not seen it yet.

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, reclaiming my time, the gentleman makes the very point that I am trying to make. This is not about bad guys and good guys. What we do when we subvert the Constitution of the United States to try to get some bad guys is that we subvert the Constitution of the United States for the good guys also. We cannot afford to do that. The rules cannot be different for one group and another group, because then we have to decide which one falls into each of those groups. Mr. Chairman, I want to call upon my colleagues to withdraw this bad bill. Bet us out of this pointing of fingers and talking about who is bad and who is good. All of the American citizens are good, until the law says they are bad. We cannot let the police officers on the street make that determination, whether they are with the Internal revenue Service, the ATF, the Atlanta police office, the D.C. police office, whatever. This is about the Constitution. This is not about bad guys and good guys.

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. I yield to the gentleman from Ohio.

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words. Mr. Chairman, I am not going to give the same speech I gave the last time, although it would be equally applicable in the context of this amendment. But we are making a mockery of the Constitution, and we just did it again when we passed the last amendment. It is not that the amendment was bad, but now we have got a different standard applying to one law enforcement agency, constitutional standard presumably, than we have applying to all other law enforcement agencies, and I have got nothing against the Internal Revenue Service, but it seems to me that the Internal Revenue Service makes more sense to be exempted than the ATF, or whatever it was called, because there are less circumstances under which they need to go and kick somebody's door in than the other agency. The point is it is the underlying bill that is the problem here. It is not exempting ATF, or the Internal Revenue Service, or the Immigration and Naturalization Service, or the city of Atlanta, or New York, or the FBI. The standard ought to be the same, and that standard was articulated in 1791 when we passed the first 10 amendments to the Constitution. That is the standard that ought to apply, and that is the problem that we are into here, and that is the reason that we are getting all these inconsistencies, because what we did in 1791 was to make one consistent standard, and what my colleagues on the other side are trying to do is to get at the bad guys. Well, who are the bad guys?

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. I thank the gentleman for yielding.

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, I was just looking at the language, and it refers to section rather than bill. There are several sections in this bill, and what I am trying to be clear on is that your language applies to the entire bill, not just to one particular section of the bill.

Mr. WATT of North Carolina

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. I am happy to yield to the gentleman from Michigan.

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words.

Mr. WATT of North Carolina

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, I would like to inquire of the gentleman from Florida [Mr. McCollum] if, in fact, testimony was presented and the committee then dealt with this and thought it was a wonderful idea, why was it not in the original bill? Why are we coming to the floor with it at the 99th hour on this bill and dealing with it in 10 minutes of debate? If you all thought it was a great idea, I would have thought you would have incorporated it into the bill.