[Congressional Record Volume 149, Number 58 (Thursday, April 10, 2003)]
[House]
[Pages H3059-H3076]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
CONFERENCE REPORT ON S. 151, PROSECUTORIAL REMEDIES AND TOOLS AGAINST
THE EXPLOITATION OF CHILDREN TODAY ACT OF 2003
Mrs. MYRICK. Mr. Speaker, by direction of the Committee on Rules, I
call up House Resolution 188 and ask for its immediate consideration.
The Clerk read the resolution, as follows:
H. Res. 188
Resolved, That upon adoption of this resolution it shall be
in order to consider the conference report to accompany the
bill (S. 151) to amend title 18, United States Code, with
respect to the sexual exploitation of children. All points of
order against the conference report and against its
consideration are waived. The conference report shall be
considered as read.
The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. LaHood). The gentlewoman from North
Carolina (Mrs. Myrick) is recognized for 1 hour.
Mrs. MYRICK. Mr. Speaker, for the purpose of debate only, I yield the
customary 30 minutes to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Frost), pending
which I yield myself such time as I may consume. During consideration
of this resolution, all time yielded is for the purpose of debate only.
Yesterday the Committee on Rules met and granted a ``normal''
conference report rule for S. 151, the Prosecutorial Remedies and Other
Tools to end the Exploitation of Children Today Act of 2003, or the
PROTECT Act.
The rule waives all points of order against the conference report and
against its consideration. Mr. Speaker, this should not be a
controversial rule. It is the type of rule that we grant for every
conference report that we consider in the House.
The PROTECT Act sends a clear message to those who prey upon children
that if they commit these crimes, they will be punished. This
legislation provides stronger penalties against kidnapping, ensures
lifetime supervision of sexual offenders and kidnappers of children,
gives law enforcement the tools it needs to effectively prosecute these
crimes, and provides assistance to the community when a child is
abducted.
To accomplish this, S. 151 establishes an AMBER Alert coordinator
within the Department of Justice to assist States with their AMBER
Alert plans. This coordination will eliminate gaps in the network,
including gaps in interstate travel, work with States to encourage
development of additional AMBER plans, and serve as a nationwide point
of contact.
The AMBER program is a voluntary partnership between law enforcement
agencies and broadcasters to activate an urgent alert bulletin in
serious child abduction cases. The goal of the AMBER Alert is to
instantly galvanize the entire community to assist in the search for,
and the safe return of, that child.
I am pleased that this legislation also authorizes $20 million for
fiscal year 2004 for the Secretary of Transportation to make grants to
States for the development or enhancement of notification or
communication systems along the highways. I am sure Members have seen
those reader board signs. These signs are for alerts and other
information for the recovery of abducted children. Doing this will
enable all 50 States to implement this life-saving program, and we have
seen several examples of it working lately to literally save children's
lives.
For those individuals who would harm a child, we must ensure that
punishment is severe and that sexual predators are not allowed to slip
through the cracks of the system to harm other children. To this end,
this legislation provides a 20-year mandatory minimum sentence of
imprisonment for stranger abductions of a child under the age of 18,
lifetime supervision for sex offenders and mandatory life imprisonment
for second-time offenders; and we all know that is a very common
occurrence.
This responds to the long-standing concerns of Federal judges and
prosecutors regarding the inadequacy of the existing supervision period
for sex offenders, particularly for the perpetrators of child sexual
abuse crimes, whose criminal conduct may reflect deep-seated deviant
sexual disorders, and they are not likely to disappear within a few
years of release from prison.
Furthermore, S. 151 removes any statute of limitation and opportunity
for pretrial release for crimes of child abduction and sex offenses.
Oftentimes it is years later that sex offenses come to light because a
child is afraid to speak out. That is why this conference report is so
important. Not only does it come to the aid of the children after the
abduction with the AMBER Alert, it aims to prevent the abduction with
the provisions I just mentioned.
I also want to applaud the conferees for including legislation
authored by the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Pence) that would punish
those who use misleading domain names to attract children to sexually
explicit Internet sites. It accomplishes this goal by increasing the
penalties and provides prosecutors with enhanced tools to prosecute
those seeking to lure children to porn Web sites. As a mother and
grandmother, it is hard for me to understand how anyone can prey on a
defenseless child.
[[Page H3060]]
Therefore, I urge my colleagues to support the rule and support the
underlying bill. It is imperative for our Nation to protect our most
valuable resource, our children.
Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
Mr. FROST. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
(Mr. FROST asked and was given permission to revise and extend his
remarks.)
Mr. FROST. Mr. Speaker, by passing this conference report today,
Congress can finally end the 6 months of political maneuvering that
have delayed my legislation to help set up a nationwide network of
AMBER Alerts. The AMBER plan was named for a young girl, Amber
Hagerman, who was kidnapped and murdered in Arlington, Texas, in my
congressional district.
Make no mistake, this conference report is not perfect. It contains
some needlessly controversial provisions dealing with our criminal
laws. For that reason, some Members will oppose it.
The AMBER Alert Network Act, which I first introduced in the House of
Representatives with the gentlewoman from Washington (Ms. Dunn) last
year, should have been law long, long ago. It passed the Senate
unanimously twice. The President made clear his support for it, and 230
Democrats and Republicans cosponsored it in the House, a clear
majority. But for more than 6 months now, House Republican leaders
refused to allow the House to vote on this bipartisan bill to protect
America's children. And 2 weeks ago, 218 House Republicans ignored a
last minute letter from the family of Elizabeth Smart and voted to
support their leadership and block consideration of the stand-alone
AMBER bill.
Mr. Speaker, it should not have been this hard; but we can now see an
end to this matter. We now are about to finally enact this very
important legislation.
We know the AMBER Alert system works. Since it was created in north
Texas in 1997, it has helped recover 53 abducted children, five of them
in the month of March alone. But it does not work where it does not
exist. That is why the AMBER Alert Network Act, which this conference
report includes, is so important because it will help set up a
nationwide network of AMBER Alerts.
Mr. Speaker, this has been a long road, and a lot of dedicated
Americans have worked very hard to pass this bill. In the House, the
gentleman from Texas (Mr. Lampson), the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr.
Holt), the gentleman from Kansas (Mr. Moore), and the gentleman from
Utah (Mr. Matheson), who represents the family of Elizabeth Smart, have
worked very hard. I wanted to thank the Democratic members of the
Committee on the Judiciary, especially the ranking member, the
gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Conyers), and the Subcommittee on Crime
ranking member, the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Scott), who have been
extraordinarily helpful throughout this process. I also thank my friend
and colleague, the gentlewoman from Washington (Ms. Dunn), who joined
with me to introduce the AMBER bill in the House, and of course
Senators Kay Bailey Hutchison, Diane Feinstein, and Hillary Rodham
Clinton have done a marvelous job leading the effort in the Senate.
Outside of the Congress, much credit goes to the National Center for
Missing and Exploited Children, to the National Association of Police
Organizations, to Marc Klaas and the Polly Klaas Foundation, and to all
of the organizations and individuals who worked to expand AMBER Alerts
nationwide.
Finally, I want to personally thank Ed Smart, who in an extraordinary
statement on the eve of the safe recovery of his daughter, Elizabeth
Smart, spoke directly to the American public and this Congress and
urged the prompt enactment of the AMBER Alert bill.
Mr. Speaker, this is long overdue. This will save children throughout
the United States. I commend this legislation to this House and to the
President.
Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
Mrs. MYRICK. Mr. Speaker, I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from
Florida (Mr. Foley).
Mr. FOLEY. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman for her leadership on
this rule, and I rise in support of the rule for S. 151, which is aimed
at combating child exploitation and abuse. As co-chair of the
Congressional Missing and Exploited Children's Caucus with the
gentleman from Texas (Mr. Lampson), I know full well the need for new
and increased penalties and the need to expend more resources to
enforce current law.
I would like to commend the work of both the gentleman from Wisconsin
(Mr. Sensenbrenner) and the conference committee for bringing this
outstanding package to the floor today. With provisions like Two
Strikes and You're Out for repeat child sex offenders, penalties for
international sex tourism, the doubling of funding for the National
Center for Missing and Exploited Children, expanding the relationship
between the United States Secret Service and the National Center for
Missing and Exploited Children, and of course the AMBER Alert Act, all
make this legislation another nail in the coffin of those who prey on
the most innocent in our society, our children.
Mr. Speaker, this bill will help bring pedophiles and others who
intend to do children harm to justice. I would, however, like to take a
moment to express some concern I have about one of the provisions that
was put into the final package relating to the Volunteers for Children
Act. This law, which the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Lampson) and I
championed, was designed to provide further protection for our Nation's
children by allowing youth-serving nonprofit organizations such as the
Boys and Girls Club, the National Council for Youth Sports, and the
National Mentoring Group to request national fingerprint background
checks in the absence of State laws providing such access.
However, since the Volunteers for Children Act was enacted in 1998,
only a very few States have complied with this law.
{time} 1045
As a result, for the past year, I have been working towards a
permanent solution with the Senate and the chairman to correct this
problem once and for all.
Though I applaud both the chairman and the conference committee on
recognizing the need to address this longstanding problem, the efforts
to correct it leave much to be done. I hope that we can work with the
chairman to provide the necessary protection to millions of children
participating in both the local and nationwide after-school and
volunteer-run programs by giving these groups the access they need to
criminal background checks of their volunteers.
We have tried it in Florida. It has been immensely successful. It has
been applauded by child advocate groups. It has been applauded by the
FDLE, Florida Department of Law Enforcement's head, Tim Moore. We have
used it extensively to provide protection for our children and
volunteer organizations.
The fingerprint check is the only absolute way we can ensure that
those working with our children are, in fact, clean of past histories
that would cause them to come into difficult situations with our
children.
Again, Mr. Speaker, I do offer my full support for the overall
package and encourage my colleagues to vote for this rule and, of
course, for the underlying bill.
Mr. HASTINGS of Florida. Mr. Speaker, I yield 4 minutes to the
gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Jackson-Lee), my good friend.
(Ms. JACKSON-LEE of Texas asked and was given permission to revise
and extend her remarks.)
Ms. JACKSON-LEE of Texas. Mr. Speaker, I thank the distinguished
gentleman from Florida for yielding me this time.
Mr. Speaker, I think it is well known that in the time that I have
spent as a Member of this Congress, I have consistently supported
legislation that will enhance the protection of our children. This
year, we received an enormous shot in the arm when Elizabeth Smart was
returned to her family, and I am reminded of the very potent words of
her father in the early hours after her return, pass a straight up-or-
down AMBER Alert bill, and that it was the community, including of
course his wonderful young daughter, who really helped bring Elizabeth
home. It was
[[Page H3061]]
the community who began to hear the announcements and various citizens
throughout his great State began to call in various information in
order to help the police locate Elizabeth.
And so, legislation that this was supposed to be is a good effort.
The AMBER Alert, nationalizing it, is a good effort.
It concerns me that there would be those who would undermine or
diminish the importance of having a national AMBER Alert by suggesting
that it was not enough, that there are many rural and urban communities
and States that do not have the system and that this bill will help.
By and large, reluctantly I will ultimately be supporting the final
passage of this legislation, but not the rule. I thought, when the
conference met that we would reasonably understand that certain aspects
this legislation are, in fact, destructive of our civil liberties and
civil justice and criminal justice systems.
For example, I abhor pornography. I am reminded of the Supreme Court
statement: I will know it when I see it. But there is certainly a
question of the first amendment as it relates to virtual pornography,
meaning that it is not an actual child; and clearly, under the rights
of privacy, although I abhor it, though I hope no one is doing it on
their jobs or in places that are inappropriate, virtual pornography is
what it is, Mr. Speaker. It is clearly pictures depicted, and not of
real and actual children, which would be absolutely intolerable.
Then we go to the next, I believe, offensive provision of this
legislation which will cause me to vote against the rule, be it called
for in a roll call or verbally, and that is the complete disrespect and
insult to Article III, Federal courts, courts that have the oversight
and affirmational confirmation process of the United States Senate and
nomination by the President of the United States; the recognition that
there are three branches of government; the three branches of
government are administrative, executive, and legislative.
In this bill designed to ensure that our children can be found, we
have taken the liberty of undermining and putting a spear, if the
Members will, in the jurisdiction and discretion of our Federal courts,
our Federal judges, by in fact requiring a mandatory directive as to
what they should do with respect to child sex offense pornography and
other sex offenses.
We are not in the courtroom, Mr. Speaker. We are not hearing the
testimony.
As I indicated, I abhor violations against children and it is our
responsibility to ensure their safety. Parts of this bill will do that.
But to intrude upon Article III courts, I would say to my colleagues is
dancing on very troubling ground and as we begin to undermine the
court's jurisdiction here, the question is, what next, to the Federal
courts whose lips are silenced because they are on the Federal bench?
I would encourage my colleagues to discuss this in their judicial
conference and begin to assess what this Congress is doing, which is
undermining the Federal judiciary.
It is my hope that someone somewhere, Mr. Speaker, will find a way to
undo this legislation as it relates to the intrusion upon our Federal
courts and the complete imploding of the separation of these powers and
the disrespect that is being given to these courts not to allow them to
have the discretion to make the appropriate decision for the defendant
and the plaintiff and the State that is in the courtroom.
I ask my colleagues to vote against this rule.
Mrs. MYRICK. Mr. Speaker, I yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from
Florida (Mr. Feeney).
Mr. FEENEY. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman for yielding me this
time.
I rise in support of the rule. The rule was actually necessitated
over a debate about what this bill should include.
Some of the opponents of the rule suggested it should include just
the AMBER Alert system, and as they well know, actually the AMBER Alert
system has already been instituted by Bush administration. It reminds
me of an experience that Adlai Stevenson shared when he was running for
President in 1956. At the end of what he thought was a great speech of
about 40 or 45 minutes, a woman from the audience came up and said, Mr.
Stevenson, I thought your speech was simply superfluous. To which he
responded, to test whether she really had a full grasp of the English
language, Thank you, Madam; I am thinking of having it published
posthumously, to which she replied, Wonderful, the sooner, the better.
Mr. Speaker, I applaud the gentleman from Wisconsin (Chairman
Sensenbrenner) in his effort to make sure that what we are doing today
is not superfluous. The AMBER Alert system is wonderful at attempting
to retrieve children that are kidnapped and transported over State
borders, but it is already in effect.
What we have tried to do in the committee under the leadership of the
chairman is to deter and punish people and put them behind bars for a
long time, who are actually about to kidnap, abuse, or sexually offend
against minors. That is what this bill ultimately did, thanks to the
leadership of the gentleman from Wisconsin (Chairman Sensenbrenner).
One of the provisions that has been added, I have a particular
interest in. It has been referred to as the Feeney amendment. This bill
with the amendment in it, as it has been modified in conference,
addresses a serious problem of downward departures from the Federal
Sentencing Guidelines by judges across the country. Although the
guidelines continue to state that departures should be rare
occurrences, they have actually proven to have been anything but.
The Department of Justice testified before the Subcommittee on Crime,
Terrorism and Homeland Security that the rate of downward departures on
grounds other than substantial assistance to the government has climbed
steadily every year for many years. In fact, the rate of such
departures is up by an overwhelming 50 percent in just the last 5 years
alone. And by the way, the rate of departures downwards is 33 times
higher than the rate the Federal judges depart upwards from the
sentencing guidelines.
The Department of Justice believes that much of the damage is
traceable to the Supreme Court decision in King v. United States.
Actually, that decision has led to an accelerated rate of downward
departures by judges.
What this bill now does is to contain a number of provisions designed
to ensure a more faithful adherence to the laws of the United States,
as passed by this Congress. Specifically, the amendment, as it was
adjusted in conference, would put strict limits on departures for child
crimes and sex offenders by allowing sentences outside the guideline
only upon grounds that are specifically enumerated by the judge. This
is important because it limits the judge's discretion, forces the judge
to explain what he has done, and provides an opportunity for the
prosecutors to appeal if the judge has been completely unfaithful.
There are a number of other reported provisions that are contained in
the Feeney amendment. It calls for the Sentencing Commission to review
and revise the departures from guidelines for all other cases that do
not involve offenses against children, provides for the Department of
Justice to have access to existing judge-identifying database
maintained by the Commission, and it does also provide there will be a
report to Congress every year by the Department of Justice reflecting
the reforms of internal appellate review practices for these downward
departures.
Finally, it provides that no more than three of the commissioners to
the Sentencing Guideline Commission can come from the ranks of the
Federal judiciary.
This is a great victory today. It is a great victory for children. It
is a great victory for those of us who do not want to just retake
possession of children that have been kidnapped or abused, but those of
us who want to prevent the abuse and the kidnapping to begin with.
Mr. HASTINGS of Florida. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 3 minutes.
I would like to engage my colleague from Florida in a colloquy if he
would be so inclined. I ask my colleague his understanding of the
modifications that took place in conference, because Members have come
to several of us
[[Page H3062]]
asking us our understanding; and quite frankly, I am not clear and
perhaps he can help us to understand whether or not it, in fact, was
modified as it pertains to all sex crimes or was it modified to include
just sexually exploited situations as it pertains to children.
Mr. FEENEY. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?
Mr. HASTINGS of Florida. I yield to the gentleman from Florida.
Mr. FEENEY. Mr. Speaker, I am going to say to my good friend in that,
in the first place, the primary source rule probably ought to be in
effect here. I was not part of the conference committee, and what I
have is a review of that.
I do note that the gentleman from Wisconsin (Chairman Sensenbrenner)
is on the floor, paying close attention; so at a minimum, I hope he
will correct me for any deficiencies.
As I understand it, with respect to being more restrictive in terms
of when Federal judges can depart downward from the guidelines, the
original Feeney amendment actually applied to all Federal offenses.
With respect to that downward departure restriction that we are doing
now, it only applies to offenses against children, sex offenses,
kidnapping, abuse, pornography. It does not apply to offenses outside
that specific realm.
Mr. HASTINGS of Florida. Mr. Speaker, so the antiquated sexual
offenses are not contemplated under the gentleman's amendment as he
understands it?
Mr. FEENEY. As I understand what the conference committee report did,
it is actually Hatch-Sensenbrenner-Graham, referring to Senator Bob
Graham, who is a colleague of ours from Florida. I am sorry, Lindsey
Graham; it is tough when we have got too many Grahams running around.
In fairness to the gentleman, I should suggest that with respect to
providing for de novo reviews of downward departures, that will apply
to all Federal offenses, and the gentleman will remember the King v.
United States case, the Rodney King incident where, for example, the
Congressional Black Caucus was very concerned and issued a letter
suggesting that we provide this de novo review; so I think we have got
the best of both worlds.
Mr. HASTINGS of Florida. Mr. Speaker, I would urge my good friend
from Florida, and he is my good friend, to take into consideration when
we decry downward departures that the people that are on the firing
line, the Article III judges, make those departures after very careful
consideration.
{time} 1100
Having served in that branch of government at one point and being an
opponent, as almost universally the Federal judges were, of mandatory
sentencing and sentencing guidelines, it is not to be taken lightly.
I agree with the gentleman that the appellate review is more than
necessary and reporting regarding same should be important. But please
do not take the downward departures to mean that the judges did not see
something that we do not have an opportunity, when we make these laws,
to clearly understand what the judge in fact saw and heard in the
sentencing provision, or even in the trial.
I could cite numerous examples where downward departures have saved
families and lives. I would hope my friend would understand that.
Mrs. MYRICK. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from
Florida (Mr. Feeney).
Mr. FEENEY. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman for yielding time to
me. I am grateful to the gentlewoman.
In the first place, the honorable gentleman has me at a disadvantage
because he has been a member of the other part of our government, and I
am respectful of the fact that he has some wisdom and insights that I
do not.
I would suggest, however, that what we are doing here is not
eliminating the ability of judges to depart from the sentencing
guidelines; we are preserving their right and asking them to explain
why they did so.
Finally, I would make the point to the gentleman that if the
departure ratio was 33 times higher than sentencing guidelines, for
every time that there is one below the guidelines, I would suggest to
him that we might be hearing from the American Civil Liberties Union,
the Criminal Defense Association, and the American Bar Association with
a sense of outrage that people with disparate treatment are being
abused by having too much sentences imposed on them.
By the way, historically in America there have been suggestions, and
I do not have any studies to back it up, that racial and ethnic
minorities have been particularly abused along those lines.
I would suggest we have struck a balance here.
Mr. HASTINGS of Florida. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I
may consume.
I would make the comment that the hope would be that we do not chill
the Federal judiciary with departure restrictions. I think it would be
a mistake on our behalf.
Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to yield 3 minutes to my good friend, the
gentleman from Texas (Mr. Lampson), a gentleman who has been and
continues to be a stalwart in the way of providing for the AMBER Alert,
a leader in this regard.
Mr. LAMPSON. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me the
time.
I want to rise in support of this conference report, and certainly to
thank all of the people who have worked on it: the gentleman from
Wisconsin (Chairman Sensenbrenner) and the gentleman from Texas (Mr.
Frost), for bringing the legislation; the gentlewoman from Washington
(Ms. Dunn) on the AMBER Alert itself; and looking into the overall
larger bill, which I became a cosponsor of early on, the work that the
gentleman from Florida (Mr. Foley) has done on the Congressional Caucus
on Missing and Exploited Children, along with me and about 150 other
Members of the House of Representatives, as we have worked diligently
to try to make a difference in this issue that deals with child
protection.
I have spoken for 2 years on this issue and am thrilled to see the
kind of interest that this has brought right now and the support it has
brought from across our House of Representatives and the Senate.
We all know about the AMBER Alert and what it is and why it is such a
good thing. So right now I really do not want to talk so much about it,
but to talk about the larger role of who is playing a role in this
overall effort: the Members of the House, the Senate, their staffs. The
work that has been done in the last several months, I think, is
extremely impressive.
Certainly, I would mention the National Center for Missing and
Exploited Children and what they have done since their involvement in
this issue for the last more than 20 years. There is the FBI, the
Customs Service, and local law enforcement officials, as well as the
media who also are a big part of the AMBER Alert.
I want to thank the families and friends of Laura Kate Smither, the
little girl who was abducted and murdered in 1997, who actually was the
inspiration for the Congressional Caucus on Missing and Exploited
Children. I stand here today in honor of Laura and with the hopes that
this important piece of legislation will prevent the abduction and
exploitation of children across America.
I also rise in support of this conference report, because it helps
the Secret Service continue its work on behalf of missing children.
Nearly a decade ago, Congress authorized the U.S. Secret Service to
participate in a multi-agency task force with the purpose of providing
resources, expertise, and other assistance to local law enforcement
agencies and the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children in
cases involving missing and exploited children.
This began a strong partnership between the Secret Service and the
National Center for Missing and Exploited Children and resulted in the
Secret Service providing critical forensic support, including polygraph
examinations, handwriting examinations, fingerprint research and
identification, age progressions and regressions, and audio and video
enhancements to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children
and to local law enforcement in numerous missing children's cases. They
have indeed made significant differences.
However, there is a clear need to provide explicit statutory
jurisdiction to the Secret Service to continue this forensic and
investigative support upon
[[Page H3063]]
request of local law enforcement or the National Center for Missing and
Exploited Children. The Secret Service amendment, which was adopted and
is part of the S. 151 conference report, will do just that.
I want to conclude and say, support the conference report. With the
help of the Secret Service, these organizations will be able to
continue their work.
Mrs. MYRICK. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Mr. Speaker, I include for the Record two letters, one from the
National Mentoring Partnership and the other from the National Council
of Youth Sports, in support of this bill.
The letters referred to are as follows:
MENTOR/NATIONAL
Mentoring Partnership,
Alexandria, VA, April 10, 2003.
Hon. Jim Sensenbrenner,
House Committee on the Judiciary, Rayburn House Office
Building, Washington, DC.
Dear Chairman Sensenbrenner: MENTOR/National Mentoring
Partnership is pleased to note that the Conference report of
the ``Prosecutorial Remedies and Other Tools to End the
Exploitation of Children Today Act of 2003'' includes
provisions to improve volunteer organizations' access to
criminal background checks on prospective volunteers. MENTOR
commends the Conferees for including these critical
provisions, which are a step towards helping mentoring and
other volunteer organizations effectively screen out those
individuals who may harm rather than help a child.
Volunteer organizations that serve vulnerable populations--
namely children, the elderly, and individuals with
disabilities--require access to accurate, timely, and
complete criminal background checks. If a background check
does not meet these criteria, a human service organization
could unwittingly hire or engage as a volunteer a person with
a dangerous criminal past--such as child or elder abuse,
molestation or rape, or a host of other offenses--to care for
their clientele. That puts children and other vulnerable
people needlessly at risk.
This is a vital issue for mentoring programs throughout the
nation because the current system is simply not functioning.
To get a nationwide check under current law, a volunteer
organization must apply through their state agency. While a
few states are responsive to these requests, in the majority
of the states it is exceedingly difficult and often
impossible to obtain a nationwide check. Many states have not
authorized an agency to handle background check requests, or
interpret federal law so narrowly that very few human service
organizations are deemed eligible to apply for the checks.
When a nationwide check can be performed, it is often
prohibitively expensive and time-consuming.
The Conference report for the PROTECT Act includes a study
that will assess the nationwide and state criminal background
check system, and make recommendations on how to ensure that
human service organizations can promptly and affordably
conduct these important checks. The Conference report also
establishes a pilot program to test out two possible methods
of streamlining access to nationwide criminal record checks.
The pilot program will enable mentoring organizations to
receive nationwide checks and protect children while a
reliable solution to this problem is found.
MENTOR, which serves over 4,000 mentoring programs
throughout the country, believes that these provisions are an
important step towards reliable, accurate, and timely
criminal record checks for volunteer organizations. MENTOR
urges Congress to support and promptly enact the criminal
background check provisions included in the PROTECT Act
Conference report.
Yours truly,
Gail Manza,
Executive Director.
____
National Council of
Youth Sports,
Stuart, FL, April 8, 2003.
Dear Congressman Sensenbrenner: On behalf of the 38,000,000
boys and girls the National Council of Youth Sports (NCYS)
membership represents, we extend a sincere thank you for your
commanding efforts to press forward on the issue of
background checks for volunteers. The NCYS proudly accepts
being one of three organizations that will participate in the
eighteen-month pilot project, within the Amber Alert bill,
whereby 100,000 background checks (33,000 each) will be
performed by the FBI.
We are grateful to each and every one of you for taking the
first step in this vital child safety initiative. This is
just the beginning, there is so much more that needs to be
done. As we move forward we will want to work together to
better understand some of the concerns. For example, while an
$18 fee for a background check may sound reasonable and be
acceptable in more affluent communities, an $18 fee in the
economically disadvantaged areas is unaffordable and will
leave our children unprotected from convicted sexual abusers.
The underprivileged economic areas are often our most
vulnerable programs allowing the predators to prey on the
weakest. Therefore, it is not only our desire but also our
fundamental responsibility to realize out determined goal for
free, easily acceptable background checks regardless of one's
economic circumstances.
The NCYS is a very strong and powerful group. A sampling of
our membership consists of the national organizations of
Little League Baseball, Pop Warner Football/Little Scholars,
American Youth Soccer Organizations, Boys & Girls Clubs of
America, Amateur Athletic Union, etc. We are prepared to
mobilize our grassroots millions and move our public
relations vehicles forward to secure a meaningful, sound and
effective piece of child safety legislation for reliable and
rapid background checks with one national database that is
federally funded so that our innocent children will be
protected from abuse and sexual victimization.
In the meantime, we are very anxious to begin the process
through this pilot project. We look forward to working
closely together as we all engage in a conscientious manner
to provide our children the protection they deserve while
living in America's neighborhoods that are safe and secure
from convicted predators.
Respectfully,
Sally S. Cunningham,
Executive Director.
Mr. Speaker, I yield 4 minutes to the gentlewoman from Washington
(Ms. Dunn), the author of the AMBER Alert system.
Ms. DUNN. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman for yielding time to
me.
On behalf of The Ed Smart family, the Polly Klaas Foundation, the
National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, and the thousands
of families still searching for their missing children, I rise today to
express my gratitude to the gentleman from Wisconsin (Chairman
Sensenbrenner), to the members of the Committee on the Judiciary, to
the House leadership, and to my coauthor of the AMBER Alert, the
gentleman from Texas (Mr. Frost), for working together, for joining
together to make our work on AMBER Alert a reality.
The AMBER Alert program will contribute hugely to the safety and the
well-being of our Nation's children. As a mother of two sons and soon-
to-be grandmother, I join with all the parents and the grandparents in
appreciating how critical it is to have all communities have the access
and the full ability to protect their children from kidnappers who seek
to harm our little ones.
To date, AMBER Alert has been credited with the safe recovery of 53
children. We know the AMBER Alert system works by allowing communities
to tap into the resources of an educated public, to prepare local law
enforcement, and engage the media in reuniting children with their
loving families.
The media and an educated public, for example, were absolutely
critical in the safe return of Elizabeth Smart to her family a few
weeks ago. President Bush showed very strong and early support for our
bill last year; and thanks to his good sense, he took the first steps
by providing grants to States and localities to help establish local
AMBER Alert programs.
It is now time for Congress to codify the AMBER Alert. We need to
provide additional funding. We need to provide additional oversight to
empower every single State and community with the tools and the
resources to react quickly to child abductions and bring these children
safely home to the arms of their parents.
I applaud the leadership and the commitment of both the House and
Senate conferees for moving this bill through the legislative process
so quickly so that it can arrive on the President's desk before the
Easter break. All of us should be proud for enacting a law that will
help prevent crimes against our most vulnerable citizens, our children.
I urge my colleagues to support this important legislation.
Mr. HASTINGS of Florida. Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to yield 2
minutes to my good friend, the gentlewoman from Ohio (Mrs. Jones), who
was formerly a member of the Ohio judiciary.
Mrs. JONES of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the gentleman
for yielding time to me.
It is not often that we have the opportunity to use our prior
experience to discuss a piece of legislation. For those who are not
aware, I was a judge for 10 years in Cuyahoga County, Ohio, handling
cases not only dealing with civil matters but also cases where the
death penalty could in fact be imposed.
I am the former district attorney for Cuyahoga County, Ohio, where I
prosecuted cases with a staff of 180 lawyers for 8 years, and now I get
to the third branch of government, the legislative.
I recognize that often in response to incidents or occurrences we
want to
[[Page H3064]]
jump up and pass legislation that we think will have a deterrent
impact. But I say to Members, as one who has not only enforced the law
but has been required to impose sentences, that a response of placing
another mandatory sentence on the books of these United States is not
the appropriate response. Judges need discretion. Judges need the
opportunity to assess the facts, look at the law, and impose the
appropriate sentence.
I support AMBER Alert. I wish that in the many cases that I had and I
prosecuted for 8 years that we had an AMBER Alert system; and I am
confident that many more young people across the country would have in
fact been returned to their families had we had the system. I am 100
percent in support. I speak out in favor of it.
Let me talk about something else: eliminating pretrial release. There
is in our country a presumption of innocence. Most recently, we have
seen so many people who as a result of DNA examination have been taken
out of prisons across this country. To eliminate a pretrial release
again takes away the discretion of a judge who has an opportunity to
look at the facts and circumstances and ought to be able to determine
whether or not a person should be released on pretrial release.
Finally, let me speak on the Three Strikes and You are Out. The fact
is, in many instances across this country where we have imposed Three
Strikes and You are Out, we have young men and women who are imprisoned
on offenses, and the third strike may have been the least serious of
the three, or two, and they are in jail for life.
I do not take lightly offenses that people commit, and I have imposed
as a judge punishment on some of the most serious offenses. But we have
to keep in mind the need to have judicial discretion, the need to look
across the country at families whose lives have been destroyed forever
because people are placed in jail.
Most recently, there was a study that was released that talks about
the significant number of African Americans in prison across the
country, and in addition, the significant number of Americans,
regardless of their race or color, that are in jail. Let us think about
mandatory sentences. Let us support AMBER Alert, but keep in mind, we
all believe in rights.
Mrs. MYRICK. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from
California (Mr. Royce).
Mr. ROYCE. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman for yielding time to
me.
Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to see that this conference report for this
crime bill came back to the floor so quickly. Let me say as a cosponsor
of this legislation that this bill includes some very important
provisions that will help States and will help the Bush administration
to continue their efforts to expand and improve the AMBER Alert system.
As we know, last fall the President provided a total of $10 million
to develop AMBER training and to develop education programs to upgrade
the emergency alert system. As we have witnessed, AMBER Alert has
worked to bring children home safely.
I wanted to share one example of where this alert has worked well.
That is the case with Nicole Timmons of Riverside, California, in my
State. The alert was not only delivered throughout California, but
luckily, the neighboring State of Nevada also ran the alert. As a
consequence, an alert driver noticed that Nicole matched the
description. He thus, within the first few hours, contacted
authorities. She was returned safely to her parents.
The point here is that they say three out of every four children who
are murdered by their abductors are killed in the first 3 hours. That
is why speed is of the essence. That is why a nationwide system is
needed to ensure that neighboring States and communities will be able
to coordinate when an abductor is traveling with a child to other parts
of the country.
We need an organized national effort so abducted children transported
across State lines can be returned to their parents, to their families,
as 53 have been safely in California and other States that have now
adopted the AMBER Alert system.
Mr. Speaker, I thank all of those who have worked to make certain
that this legislation becomes law.
Mr. HASTINGS of Florida. Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to yield 2
minutes to the gentlewoman from Illinois (Ms. Schakowsky).
{time} 1115
Ms. SCHAKOWSKY. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me
time.
Mr. Speaker, I rise today to talk about one particular provision that
I am very pleased to say has been included in this conference report,
though there are several others I strongly support and others about
which I have already expressed my concern.
Section 611 establishes a program for transitional housing assistance
for victims of domestic violence and sexual assault. My colleague from
the other body, the senior Senator from Vermont, and I have introduced
companion legislation establishing a transitional housing grant
program. Today, I want to acknowledge and thank the Senator for working
so hard to successfully get the language from these bills included in
the conference report.
We are trying to protect children from violence. The AMBER Alert
system is certainly one way to do it, but unfortunately, children are
exposed to violence in their own homes. The transitional housing
program is often the link between emergency housing and a victim's
ability to become self-sufficient.
Transitional housing not only provides a roof and a bed, but it
offers supportive services, such as counseling, job training, access to
education, and child care. These tools are critical to allowing women
to get back on their feet and to be able to support their children in a
home that is free from violence. And we are also then able to get
children out of homes where they may have been the victims and or
witnesses of abuse.
Now, it is essential that we not only pass this bill, but that we
have appropriate the $30 million provided in this legislation for
transitional housing. The women and children of this country deserve
nothing less, and I urge my colleagues to votes ``yes'' on this
conference report.
Mrs. MYRICK. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from
Texas (Mr. Smith).
Mr. SMITH of Texas. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman for yielding
me time.
Mr. Speaker, this conference report contains several important
provisions that protect the most vulnerable among us, that is, our
children.
One of those provisions is an amendment I offered to the bill, which
was approved by a vote of 406 to 15. That provision addresses the
Supreme Court decision in Ashcroft v. Free Speech Coalition, which held
that the Federal law to combat computer-generated pornography was too
broad.
The overturning of this law to combat child pornography has
emboldened those who abuse children. A General Accounting Office report
just 2 weeks ago found that in the wake of the Supreme Court decision,
child pornographers are now increasing their presence on the Internet
and are engaging in their depraved actions with relative ease.
The Internet has proved a useful tool for pedophiles and sex
predators as they distribute child pornography, engage in sexually
explicit conversations with children, and hunt for victims in
chatrooms. Unfortunately, the new playground for child pornographers is
the Internet.
Mr. Speaker, every parent should be concerned about what their
children see and do on line. We need to protect our children. If this
legislation becomes law, child pornographers will be deterred or
prosecuted. I hope my colleagues will again vote to reduce child
pornography on the Internet and support this legislation.
Mr. HASTINGS of Florida. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I
may consume.
Mr. Speaker, several measures are brought to the attention of the
body, and specifically they are now known as the Feeney amendment. I
may be able to add a little clarity by putting forward that the bill,
the bill as it is presently before us, that this particular rule is
contemplating, establishes de novo appellate review of departures,
prohibits downward departure on remands based on new grounds, requires
government motion for extra one-level
[[Page H3065]]
adjustment based on extraordinary acceptance of responsibility, and
prohibits the Commission from ever altering this amendment.
It chills departure by imposing more burdensome reporting
requirements on judges who depart, and gives the Department of Justice
access to Commission data files that identify each judge's departure
practices. And it requires the Department of Justice to report downward
departures to Judiciary Committees, unless within 90 days the Attorney
General reports to Congress on new regulations for opposing and
appealing downward departures.
Our colleague, the ranking member of the Committee on Rules, the
gentleman from Texas (Mr. Frost), as well as our colleague on the other
side of the aisle, the gentlewoman from Washington (Ms. Dunn), and many
Members of this body have worked very hard to ensure that we have the
AMBER Alert, which has proved itself to be more than useful in our
society for a very, very important and worthy cause.
That said, it is unfortunate that in this particular measure for
AMBER Alert, some ill-conceived, maybe unconstitutional, very
restrictive measures have been put forward in the substantive bill.
With that, I would urge Members to pay particular caution to the rule
itself, and when they examine voting for AMBER Alert, to be mindful
that there are a number of provisions that they are voting for that are
not just covered by the headline, but are covered by the rights of
individuals in our society and the rights of the members of the
judiciary who have a firsthand opportunity to make a determination as
to what should be done in the way of sentencing.
When I served in the judiciary, one of the things that I was proud of
was exercising discretion in a meaningful manner, and I always tried to
err on the side of reconstructing families. I think this legislation is
prohibitive in many respects. And I think no less an authority than
Associate Justice Antonin Scalia, in his remarks very recently, said to
us that mandatory sentencing can and, in fact, has led to an increase
in the significant number of persons in our society, 2 million now in
America, that are in prison.
We make these laws and we talk all the time about unfunded mandates,
and we make these laws without fully realizing the implications as to
what may transpire once they are made. The Federal judiciary will be
impacted by what we do in the name of something that is the right thing
to do, AMBER Alert.
Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
Mrs. MYRICK. Mr. Speaker, I yield such time as he may consume to the
gentleman from Texas (Mr. DeLay), the majority leader.
Mr. DeLAY. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman for yielding me time.
Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of this rule and the conference report
on the PROTECT Act of 2003. It contains the best ideas to prevent and
punish sexual predation against our American children.
First and foremost, it establishes that nationwide AMBER Alert system
to help States deploy child abduction warning networks all across this
country. But rather than simply helping local authorities rescue
abducted children, this legislation will toughen the law to make
abductions and abuse less common in the first place.
It establishes a two-strikes-and-you're-out policy for child sex
offenders, ensuring habitual predators will not be tolerated in our
communities. It allows judges to extend court-supervised release for
sex offenders, so after they have finished their time in prison,
authorities will be able to keep close tabs on these dangerous
individuals. This bill will add child abuse and child torture to the
legal predicate for first degree murder. It increases the penalty for
sexual exploitation and trafficking of children for kidnapping and
other related atrocities.
In addition to supporting this landmark legislation, Mr. Speaker, I
also rise to commend my friend from Wisconsin (Mr. Sensenbrenner), for
his determination to do this job right. This is the most comprehensive
child protection legislation the House has ever considered, and we have
one man to thank for it, and that is the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr.
Sensenbrenner).
Thanks to the gentleman, in the face of a sensational public debate
that demanded immediate action, House Republicans stood up for
America's kids, not the television cameras. He knew that this
legislation must be based on good ideas and good law, not P.R. He knew
that we needed to reform the criminal code and send a very clear
message that the United States will not tolerate the abuse of our
children.
His bill takes crimes against children very seriously. It will
prevent crimes against children and punish those who commit them. So,
Mr. Speaker, the gentleman has stood like a rock in the middle of a
political and media storm. America's children will be safer when this
bill becomes law and thousands of them whose names we will never know
will owe their lives to the gentleman.
I thank the gentleman, and I urge our colleagues to support the
conference report and this rule.
Mr. HASTINGS of Florida. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I
may consume.
Mr. Speaker, most respectfully, the majority leader's comments are
taken not lightly by any of us. But I would urge that we understand
that this law that we are passing establishes new separate departure
procedures and standards for child-related offenses and sex offenses.
Permissible departures are those that the Commission specifically
enumerates. It limits age and physical impairment departures in child
and sex cases. It prohibits gambling dependence in child and sex cases.
It prohibits aberrant behavior departures in child and sex cases. It
prohibits family ties departures in child and sex cases. And one that
is particularly troubling, because I saw this case in my past
responsibilities, it prohibits diminished capacity departures in child
and sex cases.
Everything is not as cut and dried as we would have it be, and I urge
Members, while supporting AMBER Alert, to be mindful that we are
supporting a number of provisions that would be addressed by the court
system for some time to come.
Ms. JACKSON-LEE of Texas. Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to H.
Res. 188, the Rule governing debate on S. 151, the Prosecutorial
Remedies and Other Tools to end the exploitation of Children Today Act
of 2003, also known as the PROTECT Act.
I oppose this rule because this should be a clean AMBER Alert bill,
and I oppose the extraneous provisions in the Conference Report. The
unnecessary provisions do more than delay the passage of an AMBER Alert
bill. Many of the provisions violate the Constitutional principles that
are the backbone of our government. Provisions like the Feeney
provisions that establish rigid sentencing guidelines and strips
federal judges of their discretion to make fair sentencing
determinations.
The Feeney provisions establish separate departure standards for
child-related offenses and sex offenses that must be followed by
district courts. The provisions also prohibit sentencing departures for
gambling dependence, aberrant behavior, family ties, and diminished
capacity in child and sex cases. The provisions limit age and physical
impairment departures in child and sex cases.
These provisions are a slap in the face to Article III, which grants
federal judges, not Members of Congress, the power of the judiciary.
This is another example of the Congress inappropriately attempting to
interfere in the operation of our judicial system. Congress should
legislate and leave judicial decision making, like prison sentences to
the courts.
Also troubling is the ``virtual'' child pornography provision that
labels, ``a digital image, computer image, or computer-generated image
that is, or is indistinguishable from, that of a minor engaging in
sexually explicit conduct.'' This provision contradicts the Majority
opinion of the Supreme Court of the United States, who found that
legislative attempts to include computer-generated images involving no
real children in the definition of pornography are overboard, a
violation of the First Amendment right to free speech, and therefore,
unconstitutional.
These provisions violate the Constitution and distract our attention
from the most important element of the Conference Report: the AMBER
Alert System. The AMBER Alert system is a program supported by members
of both parties in both Chambers of Congress, not to mention every
American citizen. Despite this almost universal support of AMBER Alert,
the Conference Report has been bogged down with extraneous,
unconstitutional amendments.
I am stunned that so many members of Congress have stubbornly
demanded Amendments to what should be a clean AMBER Alert bill. By so
doing they postpone the establishment of a national AMBER Alert system
and put the lives of America's children at risk.
[[Page H3066]]
For this reason, Mr. Speaker, I oppose H. Res. 188.
Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.
Mrs. MYRICK. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time, and I
move the previous question on the resolution.
The previous question was ordered.
The resolution was agreed to.
A motion to reconsider was laid upon the table.
Mr. SENSENBRENNER. Mr. Speaker, pursuant to House Resolution 188, I
call up the conference report on the Senate bill (S. 151) to amend
title 18, United States Code, with respect to the sexual exploitation
of children, and ask for its immediate consideration.
The Clerk read the title of the Senate bill.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Pursuant to House Resolution 186, the
conference report is considered read.
(For conference report and statement, see proceedings of the House of
April 9, 2003, at page H2950.)
The SPEAKER pro tempore. The gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr.
Sensenbrenner) and the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Scott), each will
control 30 minutes.
The Chair recognizes the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr.
Sensenbrenner).
General Leave
Mr. SENSENBRENNER. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all
Members may have 5 legislative days within which to revise and extend
their remarks and include extraneous material on the conference report
for S. 151.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Is there objection to the request of the
gentleman from Wisconsin?
There was no objection.
Mr. SENSENBRENNER. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may
consume.
Mr. Speaker, this conference report contains provisions of H.R. 1104,
the Child Abduction Protection Act, which overwhelmingly passed the
House 410 to 14 less than 2 weeks ago, and the provisions of S. 151,
the PROTECT Act of 2003, which passed the other body 84 to nothing on
February 24.
{time} 1130
Over the last several days, during the course of lengthy staff
meetings and an open, working meeting of conferees, we have worked
diligently to resolve differences between the House and the Senate. I
believe we were successful in crafting a bipartisan conference report
that recognizes a comprehensive effort is needed to better protect
children. In order to accomplish this, the legislation includes
provisions to help prevent crimes against children, to assist in the
safe recovery of abducted children, to enhance the investigations and
prosecutions of these crimes, and to ensure that the offenders are held
accountable and unable to repeat these crimes.
An abducted child is a parent's worst nightmare. We must assure that
law enforcement in our communities have every possible tool to prevent
abductions in the first place, and when an abduction occurs, to recover
a missing child quickly and safely, and to ensure that the criminal
receives sure and swift justice, including an appropriate sentence in
prison.
The overarching goal of this comprehensive package is to stop those
who prey on children before they can harm children. This is
accomplished by destroying the illicit markets that encourage
exploitation and abduction of children, strengthening penalties to
reflect the seriousness of these crimes, halting repeat offenders, and
enhancing law enforcement agencies to effectively prevent, investigate
and prosecute crimes against children.
For instance, this legislation responds to the April 16, 2002,
Supreme Court decision in Ashcroft v. The Free Speech Coalition that
struck down a 1996 law written to combat computer-generated
pornography. As the president for the National Center for Missing and
Exploited Children stated, ``The Court's decision will result in the
proliferation of child pornography in America unlike anything we have
seen in more than 20 years.''
Congress has an obligation to prevent the resurgence of the child
pornography market. This conference report will help do so by amending
the definition of computer-generated child pornography so that it will
withstand a constitutional challenge.
Additionally, the conference report provides strong support to
recover abducted children quickly and safely through a prompt and
effective public alert system. Such a system can be the difference
between the life and death for that child.
To accomplish this, the conference report codifies the AMBER Alert
program currently in place in the Departments of Justice and
Transportation, and authorizes increased funding to help States deploy
a child abduction communication warning network. While our goal must
always be to prevent the abduction of the child before it occurs, our
communities should also have an effective and responsive AMBER Alert
system to assist in the quick and safe return of the kidnapped child.
I am happy to report that this compromise legislation doubles the
authorized funding for the National Center for Missing and Exploited
Children, the Nation's resource center for child protection, to $20
million a year through 2005. The center assists in the recovery of
missing children and raises public awareness of ways to protect
children from abduction, molestation, and sexual exploitation.
Another vital component in the effort to protect children are strong
laws that hold the criminal accountable. Those who abduct children are
often serial offenders who have already been convicted of similar
offenses. Sex offenders and child molesters are four times more likely
than any other violent criminal to repeat their offenses against
children. This number demands attention, especially in light of the
fact that a single child molester on average shatters the lives of over
100 children.
Under this legislation, sexual predators will no longer slip through
the cracks of the system and harm other children. To this end, the
legislation provides a 20-year mandatory minimum sentence of
imprisonment for non-familial abductions of a child under the age of
18, lifetime supervision for sex offenders, and mandatory life
imprisonment for second-time offenders. The compromise legislation
restricts the opportunity for pretrial release for crimes of child
abduction and sex offenses and extends the statutes of limitation.
Finally, this conference report contains provisions to address the
long-standing and growing problem of downward departures from the
Federal sentencing guidelines. Outrageously, between 1996 and 2001,
U.S. courts have lowered the sentences of one out of every five of
those convicted of sexually abusing a child or sexually exploiting a
child through child pornography.
Strong sentencing is an essential component in any effort to fight
crimes against children. All of our efforts in this bill and in
previous anticrime measures are fruitless if, at the end of the day,
judges are permitted to give offenders a slap on the wrist, which is
exactly what is happening today with increased frequency.
I am proud of the efforts of the conferees to quickly send this
legislation to the President. It was a fair and open process, and the
exhaustive negotiations yielded extensive changes to the base text of
the legislation that passed the House. Most of these changes were made
to accommodate the concerns of my colleagues in the minority party,
both in the Senate and in the House.
I am extremely proud of the extraordinary effort my now-weary staff
expended to help craft this conference report and to get to it the
floor today. I would like to extend special thanks to Sean McLaughlin,
Will Moschella, Beth Sokul, Jay Apperson and Katy Crooks of the
Committee on the Judiciary staff. Their dedication is greatly
appreciated.
The bottom line is that this comprehensive legislative package will
crack down on child abductors, build and expand on the work of the
National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, give Federal
authorities additional tools to prevent and solve these horrific
crimes, and provide meaningful sentencing reform for all crimes. I urge
my colleagues to protect America's children from the worst predators in
our society by supporting this bipartisan child protection legislation.
Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
Mr. SCOTT of Virginia. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may
consume.
[[Page H3067]]
(Mr. SCOTT of Virginia asked and was given permission to revise and
extend his remarks, and include extraneous material.)
Mr. SCOTT of Virginia. Mr. Speaker, the conference report before us
started out as an effort to quickly pass AMBER Alert, a bipartisan
noncontroversial provision which had already passed the Senate. I am a
cosponsor of the House version of the AMBER Alert so I am anxious to
see that it be passed because it has been actually shown to help
children. It will codify a program of grants and assistance to States
and localities to establish a national communications system so that
abducted children can be saved. As the gentleman from Wisconsin pointed
out, that system works.
However, the bill now before us is loaded down with an array of crime
sound-bite provisions that make the AMBER Alert bill just an
afterthought in the legislation. The bill that has gone through the
conference process, some provisions have been improved, some have been
made worse; but I am unable to support the conference report at this
time.
Mr. Speaker, the bill retains egregious provisions that expand the
Federal criminal laws into areas traditionally left to State criminal
laws. It expands the death penalty, despite the fact that almost 70
percent of death penalties imposed in the United States are found to be
erroneous and the fact that over 100 people sentenced to death in the
last 10 years have been subsequently shown to be innocent.
250 Members of the House, many supportive of the death penalty, have
sponsored the Innocence Protection Act to provide reasonable assurances
that fewer innocent people will be put to death. So we should certainly
not be adding more death penalties before this act passes.
There are numerous provisions in the bill that create new mandatory
minimum sentences, including the baseball-based sound byte, ``two
strikes and you're out,'' which mandates life without parole for a
second-offense requirement involving a minor. The offenses covered by
that provision fortunately have been limited through the conference
report process by eliminating some of the minor offenses involving a
minor child, but it still includes as a child sex offense some
consensual acts between teenagers.
The bill also adds a 5-year mandatory minimum for first offense
crimes that are Federal crimes only because a person crosses State
lines, such as when an 18-year-old and a 17-year-old conspire to cross
State lines from Washington, D.C., to Virginia to have consensual sex.
Just to show my colleagues how bizarre that provision is, if children
are conspiring to cross from Virginia to Washington, D.C., to have sex,
it would not be a child sex offense, and that is because consensual sex
outside of marriage is not a crime in Washington, D.C., while it is in
Virginia.
The bill also provides for a new wiretap authority in many of these
cases including consensual sex and including some of the activities
that do not even constitute a crime, and in some of those crime cases,
bail may be denied during trial.
Of course, we are supposed to expect that prosecutors will ignore the
law to carry mandatory minimum terms and not bring those cases. The
reason we have mandatory minimums in the first place is because judges
cannot be trusted to determine who should be sentenced to life and who
should be sentenced to less, so we give everybody a life sentence. So
our prisons are filled with people today who are serving time because
they were convicted of just tangential involvement in somebody else's
drug trade and end up serving more time than bank robbers.
We should let the sentencing commission and judges determine the
appropriate sentences. Mandatory sentences have been criticized because
they often require sentences which violate common sense in some cases,
and that is why the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court is a frequent
critic. Not only do we mandate numerous mandatory minimums without
regard to what the individual circumstances of the case might be, but
one amendment, the Feeney amendment, reduces the discretion of the
sentencing commission and judges to robot-like conformity without
regard to how the sentence compares to equally serious offenses, nor
does it recognize that circumstances can vary from one case to another.
There was a dramatic effort to fix that amendment, representing a
brand-new version at the conference committee meeting, but it was
ineffectual, as well as rife with errors. In just a cursory reading of
that amendment, which was first seen by some of us at the meeting
itself, it became clear that it had several major unintended effects.
For example, it removed consideration in sentencing for exemplary
military service. Another bizarre exchange occurred in which we were
told that the word ``and'' actually meant ``or'' and it did not matter
whether you had ``and'' or ``or.'' I do not know when the change took
place, but the version before us now has the word ``or'' instead of
``and.'' Nevertheless the amendment still reduces the judge's ability
to make the punishment fit the crime.
Most cases are sentenced within the sentencing guidelines range; and
according to the American Bar Association, 79 percent of the departures
from the guidelines are agreed to by the prosecution. I would like to
insert the letter from the ABA into the Record at this point.
American Bar Association,
Chicago, IL, April 9, 2003.
Dear Senator: I write on behalf of the American Bar
Association to express deep concern about the Feeney
amendment, which has been incorporated in the conference
report to accompany S. 151, legislation to ban ``virtual''
child pornography. Although we are pleased to see that some
of the more offensive provisions of this amendment were
modified in conference, we continue to believe that this
provision would fundamentally alter the carefully crafted and
balanced system established by the Sentencing Reform Act,
without any of the customary safeguards of the legislative
process. Indeed, to the extent the amendment would give
prosecutors a unique and absolute power to check the
discretion of sentencing judges, it would have an unsettling
effect on the constitutional balance of power.
The Feeney amendment would legislatively overrule a
decision of the United States Supreme Court, United States v.
Koon, 518 U.S. 81 (1996), and amend central provisions of the
Sentencing Reform Act of 1984. It would void numerous
sections of the Federal Sentencing Guidelines, and, for the
first time, amend the Guidelines by direct legislation. It
would preclude the exercise of judicial discretion in certain
cases, and make judicial departures in all cases subject to
de novo appellate review. It would impose very troublesome
reporting and oversight requirements on judges that will
certainly have a chilling effect on judicial independence,
and discourage the imposition of just sentences in many
cases.
Should Congress enact the Feeney amendment, all these
dramatic changes would be accomplished through a House floor
amendment to an unrelated bill, adopted without committee
hearings by either the House or the Senate, or the benefit of
consultation with the U.S. Sentencing Commission, the federal
judiciary, or the organized Bar.
The Feeney amendment is evidently a response to the
perception that judges have engaged in widespread abuses of
their departure power following the Supreme Court's Koon
decision in 1996. Based on the Sentencing Commission's
statistics, I believe there are reasons to doubt the accuracy
of this portrayal.
Although sentences below the guideline range are now more
common that in the early days of guidelines sentencing, the
primary responsibility for this result lies with the
Department of Justice. In FY 2001, of 19,416 downward
departures awarded federal defendants, approximately 15,318
came on government motion. Put another way, in 2001, 79
percent of downward departures in the United States were
requested by the Government.
Similarly, although the rate of non-substantial assistance
departures has increased since the Koon decision, the vast
majority of that increase is attributable to the fact that
the number of departures in the five `'fast-track'' border
districts more than tripled, from 1871 to 1996, to 5928 in
2001. In short, the increased rate of non-substantial
assistance departures since Koon is due primarily to requests
for such departures by the Department of Justice.
The foregoing figures do not, of course, present the whole
picture. The percentage of judicially initiated departures
has increased somewhat since Koon. It may well be that some
judicially initiated departures are inappropriate and that
some action to curb inappropriate judicial departures should
be considered. However, it would seem advisable to determine
the nature and extent of any problem with judicial departure
power before legislating a virtual end to that power. As
Senator Hatch wisely observed some years ago:
``[C]ongressional policy makers must take advantage of the
most current and complete information available when making
legislative decisions. Whenever possible, Congress should
call upon those with relevant empirical research, encouraging
those most knowledgeable of and most
[[Page H3068]]
involved with the guidelines--judges, prosecutors,
practitioners and the Commission--to express their views.''
I am informed that the U.S. Sentencing Commission is even
now in the midst of a study of judicial departures in white-
collar crime. Would it not be prudent to direct the
Commission to extend that study to departures generally and
report promptly to Congress on its results? (I understand
that the General Accounting Office has also undertaken a
study of departures, at the request of the House Judiciary
Committee.) Such a congressional directive could also
instruct the Commission to develop proposals to address any
deficiencies revealed by the study. Once armed with full
information, Congress could determine the true nature and
extent of any problem, and could, if necessary, craft an
appropriate, measured legislative response to any
deficiencies in departure practice left unaddressed by the
Commission.
The American Bar Association is confident that a period for
study of current departure practice would not only yield a
more accurate picture of any problems that may exist, but
could not fail to produce a better solution than the Feeney
Amendment.
The Sentencing Reform Act of 1984 created a system of
distributed authority that was designed to ensure fair,
predictable sentences for defendants convicted in
federal court. As contemplated by the Act itself, the
Guidelines drafted by the Sentencing Commission and
approved by Congress channel judicial sentencing
discretion, but they do not eliminate it. This system
reflects two truths about the process of making sentencing
rules. First, no set of rules can anticipate the
circumstances of every individual defendant. Accordingly,
if justice is to be done, judges must retain the
flexibility to determine that some defendants do not fit
the mold envisioned by the Commission. Second, the
departure power is a means of providing feedback from
judges to the Sentencing Commission and Congress. By
studying departure patterns, the Commission can identify
those guideline rules that judges are consistently finding
to be inappropriate for certain classes of defendants.
In the Sentencing Reform Act, Congress conferred upon
Federal judges the power to depart whenever ``there exists an
aggravating or mitigating circumstance of a kind, or to a
degree, not adequately taken into consideration by the
Sentencing Commission in formulating the guidelines'' in the
enabling legislation that created the U.S. Sentencing
Commission, 18 U.S.C. Sec. 3553(b). The Feeney Amendment is
inconsistent with the original judgment of Congress about the
necessity and value of a guided departure power and the
important role of judges in Federal sentencing. If passed,
the Amendment would severely compromise critical
institutional features of the Federal sentencing system.
By curtailing and burdening judicial departure authority,
the Feeney Amendment strikes a blow at judicial independence
and sends an unmistakable message that Congress does not
trust the judgment of the judges it has confirmed to office.
By overriding the Sentencing Commission and legislatively
rewriting the Guidelines, the Feeney Amendment threatens the
legitimacy of the Commission. The Commission was created by
Congress to ensure that important decisions about Federal
sentencing were made intelligently, dispassionately, and, so
far as possible, uninfluenced by transient political
considerations. Congress should accord the Commission and its
processes some deference unless and until the Commission has
demonstrably failed in its duties.
By bypassing the deliberative processes of Congress itself,
the Feeney Amendment reflects a profoundly troubling
disregard of the legislature's role in establishing Federal
sentencing policy. If passed, the Feeney Amendment would
alter core features of Federal criminal sentencing and
appellate practice. Yet the Amendment has never been the
subject of a hearing in either the House or Senate, and
neither house has had the benefit of meaningful consultation
with any of the institutions most affected by the Amendment.
The American Bar Association is firmly committed to the
maintenance of a just and effective Federal sentencing
system. I am confident that you and your colleagues will give
the Feeney Amendment the careful scrutiny it requires. I am
hopeful that such scrutiny will lead you to oppose the Feeney
Amendment and to support a careful study of judicial
departures by the Sentencing Commission. . . .
The bill before us defiantly enacts laws prohibiting such acts as
what is called ``virtual child pornography.'' The United States Supreme
Court gave us a bright-line test to determine whether or not computer-
generated images can constitute illegal child pornography. The Court
said that if the image is not otherwise obscene it must involve real
children in the production to be illegal. Pornography which was
produced without real children under the Ashcroft case is not illegal.
In a direct violation of that case, this bill prohibits such images,
whether or not it was produced with real children, unless the defendant
can prove his innocence.
The Court, of course, dealt with that issue and said that we could
not require a defendant in an American judicial court to prove his
innocence, so that provision is clearly unconstitutional.
Mr. Speaker, we have a number of problems with this case, including
the mandatory minimums. I just want to point out that the Chief Justice
of the United States Supreme Court, United States Judicial Conference,
the Sentencing Commission, the American Bar Association, the Federal
Bar Association, the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, the
Washington Legal Foundation, the CATO Institute, and a host of other
sentencing and judicial system experts have pleaded with Congress not
to impair the ability of courts to impose just and responsible
sentences.
I would ask also that a letter from the NAACP also be inserted into
the Record at this point.
National Association for the
Advancement of Colored People,
Washington, DC, April 10, 2003.
Re NAACP opposition to S. 151, the ``Child Abduction
Prevention Act of 2003.''
Members,
House of Representatives,
Washington, DC.
Dear Representative: On behalf of the National Association
for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), the nation's
oldest, largest and most widely-recognized grass roots civil
rights organization, I am writing to urge you to oppose the
conference report to S. 151, the ``Child Abduction Prevention
Act of 2003'' in its current form.
While the issue of child abduction is a serious, heart-
wrenching and too often tragic issue that deserves to be
dealt with aggressively at a federal level, Title IV of the
final bill would radically limit federal judicial discretion
to impose just sentences for almost all federal offenses; not
just those relating to child abduction. Because this
provision overrules a key Supreme Court decision and
constitutes a dramatic encroachment on the judiciary, it is
opposed not only by civil rights organizations across the
board, but also by Supreme Court Chief Justice Rehnquist, the
Federal Judicial Conference, the Federal Sentencing
Commission, the American Bar Association, the Federal Bar
Association as well as countless law professors, prosecutors
and public defenders.
The potential impact of this provision on the African
American community and on ethnic minority American
communities throughout the nation is almost incomprehensible.
Racial bias in our nation's criminal justice system is
widespread and well documented. For example, according to
reports from the US Department of Justice and the US
Department of Health and Human Services, people of color
commit drug offenses at a rate proportional to our percentage
of the US population, roughly 25% for African Americans and
Hispanic Americans combined. Yet almost 75% of the people
charged in this nation with a drug offense are either
Hispanic or African American.
The impact this racial bias has on our communities is
devastating. According to the US Department of Justice report
issued just last week, an alarming 12% of all African
American men between the ages of 20 and 34 are in jail or in
prison. One out of every three black men born in the United
States will spend time behind bars in their lifetime.
The federal prison system now holds over 160,000 inmates,
more than any single state prison system. Furthermore, the
federal prison population has more than quadrupled in the
last 20 years for mostly non-violent offenses even while the
rate of incarceration has actually slowed in many states.
Under Title IV, the growth rate is predicted to be
staggering.
I hope that you will consider the far-reaching impact this
legislation will have on individual lives as well as whole
communities and even our nation. I urge you again to oppose
the final conference report unless Title IV is eliminated or
at least amended to address only child abduction cases.
Thank you in advance for your attention to this matter. If
you have any questions, I hope that you will feel free to
contact me at (202) 638-2269.
Sincerely,
Hilary O. Shelton,
Director.
Mr. Speaker, for those reasons we should vote against this report and
send the measure back to committee for serious consideration. Many of
the problems can be fixed if we would seriously consider the bill in a
regular deliberative legislative process.
So I urge my colleagues not to vote on the conference report, and I
reserve the balance of my time.
Mr. SENSENBRENNER. Mr. Speaker, I yield 4 minutes to my colleague,
the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Green).
Mr. GREEN of Wisconsin. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for
yielding to me.
The gentleman from Virginia and I must be looking at different
legislation. In my view, this is a proud moment for the House.
{time} 1145
It is a proud moment for the Committee on the Judiciary. I know it is
a
[[Page H3069]]
proud moment for me personally. I came to Congress with the hope of
having moments like this.
There are so many great provisions and parts to this comprehensive
legislation. I will focus on just three, the three that I was most
involved with, number one, what is the so-called the ``two strikes and
you're out'' for child molesters provision. With respect to Federal sex
crimes against kids, it says very simply that if you have been arrested
and convicted of a serious sex crime against kids, and when you get
out, you do it yet again, you are going to go to prison for the rest of
your life. No more chances, no more questions and, Lord willing, no
more victims.
Secondly, it contains lifetime supervision for Federal sex offenders.
We hear from judges again and again that there are criminals that go
through their courts that they believe should have supervision for a
long time. They are dangerous. They will do it again. Current law only
allows them to order 5 years. This gives them the discretion, it does
not mandate it, it givers them the discretion for lifetime monitoring.
And third, there are some provisions from the Debbie Smith Act, which
I have authored, along with the gentlewoman from New York (Mrs.
Maloney) and Senator Biden from the other body. This allows Federal
prosecutors to issue indictments against sex criminals based upon DNA
gathered at the crime scene.
Mr. Speaker, this is an institution which all too often uses
superlatives and all too often overstates the value of legislation, but
this bill, with its AMBER Alert provisions with respect to responding
to crimes and bringing back victims safe and sound, is a wonderful
thing.
With respect to the DNA-John Doe indictment provisions, which will
allow us to prosecute crimes more efficiently, more quickly, to get
these guys off the street, it is a better bill for that reason. For its
``two strikes and you're out'' provisions, which will allow us to lock
up predators once and for all, so they cannot do it yet again and
again, for those reasons, it is a wonderful, historic bill.
We are taking a bold step today. I agree. This is historic
legislation. The majority leader referred to this as the most
comprehensive child safety legislation that this body has ever taken
up. I have not been around long enough; I will trust him on that. But
what I can say from my experience, I can say that we can all say
proudly today, to policymakers, to law enforcement, to victims, to
everyday families, we can say proudly today, We fight back. And that is
something that we can all be very proud of.
I urge ``yes'' votes. Let us send a strong signal. Let us pass this
bill today.
Mr. SCOTT of Virginia. Mr. Speaker, I yield 5 minutes to the
gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Jackson-Lee) a member of the Committee on
the Judiciary.
(Ms. JACKSON-LEE of Texas asked and was given permission to revise
and extend her remarks).
Ms. JACKSON-LEE of Texas. Mr. Speaker, I thank the distinguished
gentleman from Virginia for yielding me this time.
Mr. Speaker, I think it is important to clear the record and make it
very clear that all of us are committed to fighting against the
predatory acts of those who would do harm and injure our children.
I believe there was unanimous joy in America and in this body when
Elizabeth Smart was returned to her family. I said just a few minutes
ago on this floor that it was because of an AMBER Alert-type system,
her younger sister, and the many community friends who were alert when
they began to hear information. So collectively, as neighbors, we can,
in fact, enforce against those predators the laws of the land and
protect our children.
My record on this floor has been consistently supporting laws to
protect our children. Why? Because I have seen the pain of families who
have lost their little babies, staying with the family of Laura Ayala
in my community, and wanting her to be found and recognizing the need
for the community to come together. So there are parts of this
legislation that I support.
I am glad that we are supporting the National Center for Missing
Children. I would hope that we could have done more. I have legislation
to create a separate DNA bank for sexual predators against children. My
law enforcement officials in Harris County say that if there is such a
bank, when there are allegations of sexual acts against children, the
police can go to one, single database and know that these are at least
convicted sexual predators against children and quickly assess whether
any of these individuals were in the area of this missing or molested
child.
So there are a lot of things that this body can do.
But, Mr. Speaker, I believe that the American people are respectful
of the laws and the Constitution. They know the value of having what we
call Article III courts, Federal courts, with the appropriate
discretion to be able to make decisions in the courtroom about
sentencing of individuals under the sentencing guidelines that are
worked through the Federal Judiciary and the U.S. Sentencing
Commission.
Why did we have to add this to a bill that deals with the question of
protecting children? This is a direct insert, a direct hammer, a direct
axe to the direction of the courts. It directs the Sentencing
Commission to amend guidelines to ensure that the incidence of downward
departures is substantially reduced. It means that that judge who is
listening to the case cannot go up, maybe cannot go down in terms of
sentencing. It requires that a prosecutor approve a downward departure
on extraordinary acceptance of responsibility and prohibits the
Commission from even altering this amendment.
What we are doing with this legislation is not having long hearings
about interfering with the judicial discretion; we are just writing
legislation without hearing from our judges or knowing how it will be
impacted.
One thing we value is the independence of our court system. We may
not agree with what the Supreme Court renders, I may not agree with
their decision on affirmative action or previous decisions, but the
court will have ruled. I will have to find other ways to address the
question.
Here we are dealing with these courts and not having full vetted
hearings and listening to the courts themselves.
It establishes de novo review of all downward departures in all
cases. Requires the Department of Justice to report downward departures
to the Committee on the Judiciary unless, within 90 days, the AG
reports to Congress of new regulations. It gives the Justice Department
access to Sentencing Commission files on each judge's departure
practices in all cases.
That is absolute intimidation of the court. That is absolute
intimidation of our Federal judges. That is absolute intimidation of
our Judiciary, for which we pay taxes, not allowing them the discretion
that is necessary to be fair in the courthouse.
The one thing we believe in is a due process system. And so here we
have this provision that addresses all sentencing, not just limited to
sexual crimes against children and the unfairness of the process.
I am reminded of the tragedy with Elizabeth Smart. If my colleagues
will recall, there was a gentleman incarcerated that seemingly had all
of the tendencies to be the perpetrator. He died in jail. We have now
come to find out, at least allegedly so, that there was another
perpetrator. Just imagine if he had lived, we had not found Elizabeth
Smart, and he went to trial. These are the kinds of potential
injustices that will occur when the Federal courts are in fear of their
life because they have pressure from this place to put certain
sentencing in place.
Mr. Speaker, let me say in closing that this bill has a lot of bad
aspects to it. It did not have to be so. We could have done a good job,
and I wish we had done so.
Mr. SENSENBRENNER. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may
consume.
Mr. Speaker, the gentlewoman from Texas asked why we have to have
restrictions on downward departures, and I will give her one example.
In the case of the United States v. Robert Parish, a defendant who
was convicted of possession of child pornography. He was in possession
of 1,300 images of child pornography, some of which depicted graphic
violent sexual exploitation of very young children. He got a downward
departure.
[[Page H3070]]
The majority of those 1,300 child pornography images which he
possessed depicted adolescent girls, including one in which a very
young girl, wearing a dog collar around her neck, is having sexual
intercourse with an adult male. The defendant was also in the midst of
communicating on line with a 15-year-old female high school student
when, thankfully, he was arrested.
Now, what happened when he was convicted? The sentencing guidelines
have a range of 33 to 41 months imprisonment for a conviction of those
crimes. The trial court gave him 8 months. The trial court found that
the defendant's conduct was outside the typical heartland of these
types of cases, and that the defendant was susceptible to abuse in
prison. The trial court felt that the combination of factors, including
the defendant's ``stature,'' ``demeanor,'' ``naivete,'' and the nature
of the offense justified the departure from the minimum of 33 months in
the guidelines to just 8 months.
This is why we have the restriction on downward departures for sex
crimes in this bill.
Now, I am a bit puzzled that the gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Jackson-
Lee) is complaining about the fact that we provide for a de novo review
of downward departures for all crimes, not just crimes against
children, but all crimes. When this legislation was originally debated
on March 27, she voted in favor of it, and I introduced in the
Congressional Record a letter signed by a majority of the members of
the Congressional Black Caucus who were in office at the time asking
the Clinton Justice Department, headed by Attorney General Janet Reno,
to seek a de novo review of the downward departure that the trial judge
gave to Stacey Koon, who is the police officer who was convicted of
violating the civil rights of Rodney King.
Fortunately, that passed and that is included in this legislation.
What we are doing in this legislation on de novo review is exactly what
the next speaker, the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Waters), and
those who cosigned this letter, asked the Clinton Justice Department to
do.
Now, unfortunately, the Supreme Court of the United States, in the
case of Koon v. United States, decided that there could only be a
review on appeal of a departure from the sentencing guidelines based
upon abuse of discretion by the trial judge. We overturn that part of
the Koon v. U.S. ruling and allow for de novo review on appeal.
Sometimes, maybe, if you ask for something too much, you might get it.
Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
Mr. SCOTT of Virginia. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may
consume to read just one paragraph of the letter the gentleman from
Wisconsin just referred to.
``We are troubled that the sentence for the crime was reduced to 30
months upon the court's consideration of mitigating facts. Such a
reduction for mitigating factors may be appropriate in other
circumstances.''
In other words, Mr. Speaker, we did not ask for a change in the law,
we just asked for a review consistent with the law. This bill changes
the law, changes the standard for review. What the Congressional Black
Caucus asked for was just a review under the current law.
Mr. Speaker, I submit for the Record the letter just referred to by
the gentleman from Wisconsin from the Congressional Black Caucus.
Congress of the United States,
House of Representatives,
Washington, DC, August 6, 1993.
Hon. Janet Reno,
Attorney General, Department of Justice, Washington, DC.
Dear Attorney General Reno: As members of the Congressional
Black Caucus, we are writing to you because of our concern
about the sentencing of Officer Laurence Powell and Sergeant
Stacey Koon by Judge John Davies in the Rodney King civil
rights case.
We are troubled that the sentence for the crime was reduced
to 30 months upon the court's consideration of mitigating
facts. Such a reduction for mitigating factors may be
appropriate in other circumstances. However, we feel that the
defendants' special status as police officers, with special
duties owed to the public, should have militated against such
a significant reduction.
As you well know, the maximum possible penalty was ten
years and fines of up to $250,000. Your federal prosecutors
were asking for seven to nine years. Our federal sentencing
guidelines recommended minimum sentences in a range of four
to seven years in prison.
Instead, Judge John Davies made broad use of subjective
factors. He stated that he read only letters addressed to him
from the friends and families of Officer Powell and Sergeant
Koon. He argued that much of the violence visited on Rodney
King was justified by King's own actions. However, these
officers were convicted on charges of violating Rodney King's
civil rights. We believe these mitigating factors did not
justify so large a reduction given the defendants' special
responsibilities as police officers.
In addition, Judge Davies did not afford proper weight to
the racist comments made over police radio by those convicted
on the night of the beating in discounting race as a
motivation for the beating. He similarly failed to take into
account the remarkable lack of remorse shown by Officer
Powell and Sergeant Koon since their conviction.
People of good will all over this country and of all races
were heartened when Officer Powell and Sergeant Koon were
convicted by a jury of their peers, a verdict made possible
by the Justice Department's resolve to file civil rights
charges and by the phenomenal performance of federal
prosecutors. With these severely reduced sentences, however,
we are sending a mixed message. Are police officers going to
be held responsible for excessive use of force or not?
We think what has been lost, in all this, is that police
officers have an enhanced responsibility to uphold the law.
Notwithstanding Judge Davies' authority to modify the
sentencing guidelines, most experts agreed that the minimum
four to seven years sentence should have been followed in
this case.
We realize that the trial judge is afforded sufficient
latitude in sentencing, but we urge the Department of Justice
to appeal these sentences. We need to reexamine these
sentences so that justice can finally be done in this
difficult, painful case. Only then can we begin to put this
behind us.
Sincerely,
Maxine Waters; Sanford Bishop; Eddie Bernice Johnson;
Floyd H. Flake; Albert R. Wynn; Carrie P. Meek; Eva M.
Clayton; Major R. Owens; Walter Tucker; William Clay;
Charles B. Rangel; William J. Jefferson.
James E. Clyburn; Earl Hilliard; Bennie M. Thompson; Cleo
Fields; Cynthia McKinney; John Lewis; Corrine Brown;
Donald M. Payne; Alcee Hastings; Kweisi Mfume; Louis
Stokes; Melvin L. Watt; Ronald V. Dellums.
Mr. Speaker, could you advise how much time remains on both sides?
The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. LaHood). The gentleman from Virginia
(Mr. Scott) has 16\1/2\ minutes remaining and the gentleman from
Wisconsin (Mr. Sensenbrenner) has 15\1/2\ minutes remaining.
Mr. SCOTT of Virginia. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
Mr. SENSENBRENNER. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may
consume.
Mr. Speaker, I have the letter that the members of the Congressional
Black Caucus sent to Attorney General Janet Reno on August 6, and while
they did not ask for a change in the law, what they did ask was for the
Justice Department to appeal the sentence.
Now, what happened in the Stacey Koon case is that the Court of
Appeals agreed with the Justice Department and established de novo
review. Mr. Koon's lawyer appealed to the Supreme Court, and the
Supreme Court reversed the Court of Appeals and established the abuse
of discretion standard.
Now, what this legislation does is to establish the de novo review
standard for all crimes should there be a review of the sentence on
appeal.
Mr. Speaker, I submit for the Record the letter dated August 6, 1993
from members of the Congressional Black Caucus.
Congress of the United States,
House of Representatives,
Washington, DC, August 6, 1993.
Hon. Janet Reno,
Attorney General, Department of Justice, Washington, DC.
Dear Attorney General Reno: As members of the Congressional
Black Caucus, we are writing to you because of our concern
about the sentencing of Officer Laurence Powell and Sergeant
Stacey Koon by Judge John Davies in the Rodney King civil
rights case.
We are troubled that the sentence for the crime was reduced
to 30 months upon the court's consideration of mitigating
facts. Such a reduction for mitigating factors may be
appropriate in other circumstances. However, we feel that the
defendants' special status as police officers, with special
duties owed to the public, should have militated against such
a significant reduction.
As you well know, the maximum possible penalty was ten
years and fines of up to $250,000. Your federal prosecutors
were asking for seven to nine years. Our federal sentencing
guidelines recommended minimum sentences in a range of four
to seven years in prison.
[[Page H3071]]
Instead, Judge John Davies made broad use of subjective
factors. He stated that he read only letters addressed to him
from the friends and families of Officer Powell and Sergeant
Koon. He argued that much of the violence visited on Rodney
King was justified by King's own actions. However, these
officers were convicted on charges of violating Rodney King's
civil rights. We believe these mitigating factors did not
justify so large a reduction given the defendants' special
responsibilities as police officers.
In addition, Judge Davies did not afford proper weight to
the racist comments made over police radio by those convicted
on the night of the beating in discounting race as a
motivation for the beating. He similarly failed to take into
account the remarkable lack of remorse shown by Officer
Powell and Sergeant Koon since their conviction.
People of good will all over this country and of all races
were heartened when Officer Powell and Sergeant Koon were
convicted by a jury of their peers, a verdict made possible
by the Justice Department's resolve to file civil rights
charges and by the phenomenal performance of federal
prosecutors. With these severely reduced sentences, however,
we are sending a mixed message. Are police officers going to
be held responsible for excessive use of force or not?
We think what has been lost, in all this, is that police
officers have an enhanced responsibility to uphold the law.
Notwithstanding Judge Davies' authority to modify the
sentencing guidelines, most experts agreed that the minimum
four to seven years sentence should have been followed in
this case.
We realize that the trial judge is afforded sufficient
latitude in sentencing, but we urge the Department of Justice
to appeal these sentences. We need to reexamine these
sentences so that justice can finally be done in this
difficult, painful case. Only then can we begin to put this
behind us.
Sincerely,
Maxine Waters; Sanford Bishop; Eddie Bernice Johnson;
Floyd H. Flake; Albert R. Wynn; Carrie P. Meek; Eva M.
Clayton; Major R. Owens; Walter Tucker; William Clay;
Charles B. Rangel; William J. Jefferson.
James E. Clyburn; Earl Hilliard; Bennie M. Thompson; Cleo
Fields; Cynthia McKinney; John Lewis; Corrine Brown;
Donald M. Payne; Alcee Hastings; Kweisi Mfume; Louis
Stokes; Melvin L. Watt; Ronald V. Dellums.
Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
{time} 1200
Mr. SCOTT of Virginia. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may
consume.
Mr. Speaker, I would like to point out that the Congressional Black
Caucus did not complain about the Supreme Court reinstating the law as
it was.
Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentlewoman from California
(Ms. Waters), a member of the Committee on the Judiciary.
Ms. WATERS. Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to this legislation. I
rise in opposition to the legislation because this is one of those
bills that could have been a clean bill dealing with AMBER Alert. It
could have been a bill to deal with the problem of abduction of our
children.
However, some Members of this body have taken this as an opportunity
to load up the bill with everything that they think will create certain
kinds of problems so that it can be used for political reasons. There
will be a lot of Members who will be intimidated, and they will vote
for this bill even though they are opposed to mandatory minimum
sentencing because they do not want to be accused of being against a
bill that will deal with the problems of abduction of our children.
Well, we must point out what is going on and we must focus in on this
business of mandatory minimum sentencing. Every judge that I know of in
the country and all of the Federal judges, whether they are on the left
or the right, disagree with mandatory minimum sentencing. They do not
like it. It takes away their discretion. It does not allow them to take
into consideration all of the mitigating factors, and so we continue to
overrule the judges that go through awesome processes to get where they
are by inserting mandatory minimum sentencing into legislation. It has
wreaked havoc on some communities.
As a matter of fact, when we take a look at the mandatory minimum
sentencing done because of some of the drug laws that we have created
right here on this floor, Members will see that whole communities have
been devastated, and we are beginning to get a turnaround on some of
that.
Mr. Speaker, we have young people 18 and 19 years old under mandatory
minimum sentencing, drug laws, who are doing not just a minimum 5 years
but even more, simply because the judge had no discretion. A child,
first-time offense, with some of these drug laws, coming from good
families who happen to makes a mistake, wrong place, wrong time, and we
have something similar in this legislation between consenting young
people, 18 and 17 years old who would cross a State line and have
consensual sex, they would be at risk for mandatory minimum sentencing.
We do not want to do that. This is not honest. If we want a clean
bill that deals with abductions and an AMBER Alert, do that. Take this
other mess out of the bill and stop trying to use it as a political
vehicle by which to judge some people in their elections.
Mr. SENSENBRENNER. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman
from Indiana (Mr. Pence).
Mr. PENCE. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this
time.
Mr. Speaker, I rise today with a heart filled with gratitude, not
just as a congressman, but as a parent of three small children for the
efforts of the conferees in developing this historic child protection
legislation. This will save lives.
I would particularly like to single out the courageous and tenacious
and dogged efforts of the chairman of the Committee on the Judiciary,
the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Sensenbrenner), for the gentleman's
commitment against, at times, withering public relations challenges to
move meaningful legislation for our kids through this body.
I also rise humbly to thank conferees for including language known as
the Truth in Domain Names language in the conference report which I
authored in the last Congress and again in this. Mr. Speaker, the very
moment this conference report becomes law, not only will our children
become safer from predators, but the Internet will become safer for our
children, families, and teachers. As millions of Americans do every
night, I help my kids with their homework. As we surf the Web for
useful information about history or government or science, my kids with
the most innocent intentions will type in domain names which are
harmless, but what pops up are sites with smut, profanity and
pornography; and there was no law on the books to prevent that until
today. With the Truth in Domain Names language in this legislation, we
render those Web sites illegal; and anyone who uses a misleading domain
name on the Internet to deceive a person into viewing material
constituting obscenity can face fines of up to 2 years in prison; and
if they mislead children, they can face 4 years in prison. The minute
the President signs this bill, using a misleading domain name with the
intent to deceive a child will become a criminal act.
Mr. Speaker, this historic legislation will make our children
measurably safer from those who would prey on them. Also, Congress can
today make playing on the information superhighway much safer for our
kids, and so they should. I urge my colleagues to strongly support this
conference report.
Mr. SCOTT of Virginia. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the
gentleman from North Dakota (Mr. Pomeroy).
Mr. POMEROY. Mr. Speaker, there are two aspects to this bill which I
think have very strong merit, and I am very pleased that they have been
included; and I enjoyed working with the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr.
Sensenbrenner) in getting them into the now-final conference report.
The first is the Victims of Child Abuse Act now amended into the bill
and now part of this final conference agreement that would reauthorize
this important legislation initially authorized in 1992. The thrust of
this legislation is to authorize training and technical assistance to
programs to improve the prosecution of child abuse cases. This funding
flows to centers and programs that provide training for law enforcement
agencies, for prosecutors and local jurisdictions to help them
establish comprehensive, interdisciplinary approaches to the
investigation and prosecution of child abuse cases.
As we move the AMBER Alert response forward, we have to also think
about what happens following the joyous reunion of a recovered kidnap
victim. There is a lot of healing that has
[[Page H3072]]
to take place, special counseling for the victims, and then a very
special treatment required by prosecutors and law enforcement officials
as they bring the crime to punish the perpetrator, but do not want to
further punish the victim who has already been through so much.
This legislation was initially authored by the gentleman from Alabama
(Mr. Cramer), who continues to play a leadership role in this area; and
I am glad it is included.
I am also pleased the Child Obscenity and Pornography Prevention Act
has been included in the legislation and is now part of the conference
agreement. This puts back on our books legislation banning computer-
generated child pornography. As Members may recall, there was a Supreme
Court case that found an earlier statute to be overly broad. Well, we
have looked very carefully at the ruling of the Supreme Court. We do
not challenge it. We try and follow the direction that they lay out to
craft a statute that they will find constitutional. We have tightened
the definitions of inappropriate computer-generated child pornography,
and we respond to the directions of prosecutors in trying to prosecute
those who traffic in child pornography with other provisions as well.
We make it illegal for an adult to use child pornography, sending child
pornography over the Internet in order to lure children to
inappropriate activity. We draw a per se prohibition on the depiction
of explicit sex between young children.
Mr. Speaker, we think that this legislation is going to make a very
important contribution to our efforts to stop those who want to traffic
in child pornography. I urge its adoption.
Mr. SCOTT of Virginia. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may
consume.
Mr. Speaker, I am frequently asked what we can do to repeal some of
the mandatory minimum sentences which frequently impose bizarre,
Draconian, and unreasonable sentences. Sometimes these requests come
from relatives or friends of people, women whose boyfriends deal drugs,
and the young lady does not deal drugs, does not use drugs, but she is
around the boyfriend enough so that there is no question, she probably
broke the law, took a message, drove a car to a meeting, so prosecutors
can show she was involved, but not involved to the point where she
ought to serve 20-some years, more than bank robbers serve.
When they ask what they can do about these kinds of Draconian
sentences, I tell them the first thing they have to do to repeal the
existing mandatory minimums is to stop passing new ones. Today we are
going to pass a new set of mandatory minimum sentence laws. If anybody
asks in the future where these mandatory minimums come from, Members
can point to bills like the one today.
Finally, Mr. Speaker, a lot has been said about the Ashcroft
decision. The Ashcroft decision was clear. You cannot prohibit child
pornography, illegal child pornography unless real children were
involved. The provisions in this bill allow prosecution whether or not
real children are involved. The Court goes to great lengths to say
whatever problems there are in prosecution, it is a problem for the
defense. And if nobody knows whether they are computer-generated or
involving real children, in that case they cannot successfully
prosecute. They require real children to be involved in the production;
and without real children, it cannot be illegal. This statute plainly
on its face violates that Supreme Court decision and is
unconstitutional.
Mr. Speaker, I hope we can send this back to committee, improve some
of the provisions, and pass the AMBER Alert bill like we should. But in
its present condition, I hope we will reject the conference report with
a ``no'' vote.
Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.
Mr. SENSENBRENNER. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may
consume.
Mr. Speaker, this vote is going to be the end of a long period where
the provisions of this legislation were carefully considered in the
Committee on the Judiciary in the House and in the other body. The
compromise that was reached by the conferees is a good compromise. It
will make a difference to protect children. It will give parents of
abducted children the comfort of knowing that those who have harmed
their children are going to be dealt with seriously, as well as setting
up the machinery to alert the public and the news media as well as the
police to try to find an abducted child and return that child home to
his or her parents.
This is legislation that deserves all of our support. I ask for an
``aye'' vote on this conference report. I hope that the other body will
act quickly and that the President of the United States can sign this
legislation very promptly because our children will be better protected
as a result.
Ms. KILPATRICK. Mr. Speaker, It is vital that we implement AMBER
Alert systems, not just in our local communities, but nationwide. Our
efforts to crack down on child abductors and abusers will be fruitless
if we cannot transcend state borders quickly enough to catch these
vicious criminals. I am in full support of a national system that will
provide for such coordination. In the conference report, we have just
that, a provision that provides for a nationwide alert system that is
cost-effective and technologically savvy. That is, however, not the
only provision in this bill, Mr. Speaker. There are many provisions in
this bill that, while attempting to deter these criminals from
committing such heinous acts, infringe upon the livelihoods of many
innocent individuals and prohibit what would normally be harmless,
legal acts.
I vote for the H.R. 1104, the House version of this conference report
in hopes that conferees would come together and agree upon a bill that
would attack the key issue at hand, protecting our children from
molesters and pedophiles. After reviewing the conference report, I did
not see any substantive alterations or any elimination of these bad
provisions, but rather I noticed additional provisions that, again,
hurt the livelihood of innocent individuals and legal acts. For those
reasons, Mr. Speaker, I vote ``NO'' on final passage of the conference
report and I will further expound on why I did so below.
The PROTECT Act would expand the type of homicide that can be
punished by death. This will would provide for this expansion, despite
the fact that more than half of death penalty cases are found to be
erroneous. Cognizant of the disproportionate number of minorities being
sentenced to death yearly, and the high number of erroneous rulings by
the court system, I am very reluctant to support such a provision.
Furthermore, I am not a proponent of mandatory minimum sentencing
guidelines because they undermine and eliminate judicial discretion in
individual cases. Judges, under the provision, are unable to impose a
lesser sentence after considering the circumstances surrounding a given
case. There should not be a one-size-fits-all sentencing structure when
judges are determining incarceration of a human being.
This bill would increase certain mandatory minimum sentences for many
sexual abuse crimes. For example, for child abduction cases current law
consists of a minimum of 51-63 months in jail. This bill increases the
minimum to 121-151 months in jail. Judges engage in numerous cases
regarding sexual abduction and have more experience and expertise in
those cases than we do. Therefore, we should not second-guess their
decisions on whether to impose a sentence that is more lenient. They
see the defendant and victim, they hear the arguments and testimony,
and hence, we should show deference to their rulings.
Similar to the mandatory minimum provisions, this bill also provides
for a ``two strikes and you're out'' section that creates a mandatory
life sentence for sexual offenders that have been convicted more than
once. This provision negates a judges discretion and ability to impose
just sentences. Currently, there is no such law that provides for
mandatory imprisonment for life after being convicted of a sex crime.
Under this report, if an individual commits a sex crime and is
jailed, subsequent to that person's release, he or she will be
supervised for life. The statute of limitations regarding these crimes
will be voided and an individual can be supervised for his entire life.
Not only will it be difficult for these persons to find employment or
social acceptance after such a conviction, but this bill will also
allow them to be followed and observed day-to-day.
Another bad provision that was added in conference has been coined
the ``crack-house statute amendments''. Essentially, this provision
will make legitimate businesses the victim of felony charges if they
cannot guarantee a drug free property or business. This provision was
intended to eliminate the many detrimental effects of ``rave'' parties
that allegedly expose drugs and drug usage to the minors that are
present. This provision permits government to narrow its focus to
particular parties and social gatherings where drug usage is allegedly
prevalent and impose felony charges on the owners as a means to
eradicating the drug problem. Quite to the contrary, what it
[[Page H3073]]
will do is deter innocent, law-abiding property owners and potentially
lucrative sole proprietors from investing in the community because of
their inability to ensure a drug-free environment. This provision is
bad for community and economic development and does not guarantee that
these ``raves'' will cease to exist, or that drugs will not be readily
available to youth.
In conclusion, Mr. Speaker, I am vehemently opposed to the conference
agreement. It is anti-civil liberty and overreaching. Any attempt to
provide strong protection for children is trumped by the unreasonable
persistence of the majority to increase penalties for these cases. As I
stated earlier, the court is experienced enough to decipher individual
sex crime cases and impose the appropriate sentence. We should focus on
the issue at hand--a system that is technologically apt enough to
produce the type of nationwide coordination that we need to catch
criminals. Thereafter, the courts will proceed as needed, on a case-by-
case basis. I support the need for an AMBER Alert system, but I do not
support the conference agreement in its entirety.
Ms. JACKSON-LEE of Texas. Mr. Speaker, I rise in reluctant support of
the Conference Report on S. 151, the Prosecutorial Remedies and Other
Tools to end the Exploitation of Children Today Act of 2003, or the
PROTECT Act. I support the Conference Report on S. 151 reluctantly
because while the Conference Report improves upon the AMBER Alert
system, it is does not provide us with a clean AMBER Alert Bill.
Moreover, many of the extraneous provisions of the Conference Report
violate the Constitutional principles of First Amendment freedom of
speech, and the separate judicial powers of our federal courts.
The Conference Report on S. 151 has a myriad of provisions that are
unrelated to establishing a national AMBER Alert System. I firmly
believe that all of the provisions dealing with criminal justice
matters should be debated in separate legislation, and many of the
provisions violate the Constitution.
For example, the sentencing guideline provisions proposed by Mr.
Feeney have been the subject of heated debate by the conference members
because they are at odds with the Constitution. Mr. Feeney's provisions
impose limitations or prohibitions on federal district court judges'
discretion in sentencing. By so doing, Mr. Feeney's Amendment handcuffs
federal judges and eliminates their judicial discretion in imposing
sentences.
The Feeney provisions establish separate departure standards for
child-related offenses and sex offenses that must be followed by
district courts. The provisions also prohibit sentencing departures for
gambling dependence, aberrant behavior, family ties, and diminished
capacity in child and sex cases. The provisions limit age and physical
impairment departures in child and sex cases.
Mr. Feeney's provisions improperly interfere with the sentencing
process in cases that have left Federal district courts and are now on
appeal. The Amendment prohibits downward sentencing departures based on
new grounds when a case is remanded. It also subjects district courts
to de novo review of their sentencing decisions.
The provisions offered by Mr. Feeney are an improper violation of the
doctrine of separation of powers. Article III of our Constitution
separates powers between the three branches of our Government. Our
Federal courts area allocated the power to review the facts and law in
a particular case and render a decision. The Federal judges that sit on
our courts are hand-picked for the legal acumen and wisdom, and we
defer to their experience in rendering sentencing decisions.
It is improper for Congress to mandate that Courts follow rigid
sentencing guidelines. To do so strips our federal judges of their
discretion to review the facts and extenuating circumstances of a
particular case, and render a decision based on the best interests of
the accused and the community. Members of Congress are not members of
the judicial branch. They are not privy to all of the information
needed to make an informed sentencing decision in any given case. The
responsibility of sentencing should be reserved for federal judges.
I also object to the provisions of the PROTECT Act that ban
``virtual'' child pornography. The provision of the Conference Report
to S. 151 violates the First Amendment and attempts to circumvent the
Supreme Court's ruling in Ashcroft v. Free Speech Coalition, by
claiming that ``virtual'' child pornography is ``indistinguishable''
from actual images of sexual activity.
The Majority of the Supreme Court has already ruled in Ashcroft that
extending the reach of child pornography laws to computer-generated
images that do not involve real children was ``overbroad and
unconstitutional'' and violated the First Amendment. While computer-
generated images of child sexual activity may be objectionable to all
of us, the Supreme Court has made clear that ``the government may not
suppress lawful speech as a means to suppress unlawful speech.'' The
Court also ruled, ``protected speech does not become unprotected merely
because it resembles the latter.''
The provisions of the Conference Report are particularly
controversial because they deal with Constitutional liberties and
personal freedoms. The longer we debate Amendments like Mr. Feeney's,
the longer our country operates without a national AMBER Alert System.
Every day that goes by without a national AMBER Alert system in place
puts the lives of children at risk. According to an October 2002 U.S.
Department of Justice Report titled the National Incidence Studies of
Missing, Abducted, Runaway, and Thrownaway Children (NISMART Report),
12,222 children were the victims of traditional kidnappings in the year
1999 alone. That amounts to approximately 33 children kidnapped
nationwide per day.
While the members of the House debate extraneous amendments, hundreds
of children are being kidnapped and murdered. As the Chair of the
Congressional Children's Caucus, I strongly believe that the best way
to save children's lives is to vote in support of the PROTECT Act, even
if I do so reluctantly.
That is why, Mr. Speaker, I reluctantly vote in favor of this bill.
Mr. SWEENEY. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to voice my support of AMBER
alert bill, the Child Abduction Prevention Act. One of the provisions
in this comprehensive legislation is my own bill, H.R. 220--known as
Suzanne's law. The inclusion of Suzanne's Law will aid in the abduction
investigations of college-aged children.
Mr. Speaker, this legislation was inspired by Suzanne Lyall--an
ambitious young woman from the 20th Congressional District of New York.
Suzanne abruptly vanished on March 2, 1998 from her life as a
University of Albany college student. Although only 19 years old at the
time of her disappearance, police did not immediately act after her
parents reported her missing. The common practice of state and local
law enforcement agencies is to impose a 24-hour waiting period before
accepting missing persons reports for individuals over the age of 18.
It is often assumed that college aged youth, as legal adults, disappear
from their own free will. Although this assumption may have some
anecdotal credibility, Suzanne's case proves it is not a responsible
assumption. Time is of the essence when someone disappears.
Mr. Speaker, Suzanne's Law would amend the Crime Control Act of 1990
to require each Federal, State, and local law enforcement agency to
immediately report missing children under the age of 21 to the
Department of Justice's National Crime Information Center. The current
requirement is only for those individuals under 18 years of age. Such a
change would eliminate costly delays. It is certainly prudent to offer
college-age youth, away from home and independent for the first time,
the additional resources and protections that come with the designation
of ``missing child.'' This designation will also help open doors with
organizations that sponsor ``missing children'' lists, but do not
include individuals over 17 years old.
Suzanne's parents, Doug and Mary Lyall, understand all too clearly
the pain and confusion experienced by the families and friends of
missing children. They have courageously used their own loss to help
others struggling with the disappearance of a loved one.
As a result of their tireless activism, I first introduced Suzanne's
Law during the 106th Congress. Mr. Chairman, I am pleased this
legislation, along with the other valuable provisions of the AMBER
alert bill, will be voted on today. I urge my colleagues to honor the
Lyalls and support Suzanne's Law. Perhaps with its passage, potential
breakdowns in investigations will be avoided and future college-age
disappearances will be taken seriously.
Mr. DELAHUNT. Mr. Speaker, I would like to be able to vote for this
bill. It includes provisions that I strongly support--including the
``AMBER Alert'' system that would aid in finding missing children. But
those children have been taken hostage by a bill that also includes so-
called ``sentencing reforms''--radical, sweeping changes to the Federal
sentencing system that were never considered by any committee of either
House. Provisions that would cause an explosion in the number of people
behind bars--including many who simply do not belong there.
Just three days ago, the Justice Department reported that the number
of people living behind bars in the United States had exceeded two
million for the first time in our history. Two million. And included in
that number is a staggering 12 percent of African-American men aged 20
to 34.
If this bill is the congressional response to that situation, the
public may well conclude that we have finally taken leave of our
senses.
The rate of incarceration in the U.S. is seven times higher than that
of such advanced nations as Germany, Italy, and Denmark. A primary
reason for this is that a large number of our prisoners are serving
long
[[Page H3074]]
terms for minor nonviolent offenses. And if this bill becomes law,
there will be a lot more of them.
Men in prison cannot raise families, cannot hold jobs, cannot pay
taxes, and cannot support the economy. And when they get out, many who
might have turned their lives around will have become hardened
criminals, ready to return to the only life they know. Conservatives
and liberals alike have recognized that this situation poses a threat
to the future of our cities, our families, our economic well-being, and
the health of our democracy itself. Growing numbers of prominent
conservatives have joined in calls for an end to mandatory minimum
sentences. Yet this bill takes a giant--and potentially catastrophic--
step in the wrong direction.
When Congress enacted the Sentencing Reform Act of 1984, it created a
system of guidelines for judges to follow. But Congress also recognized
that no system of guidelines can anticipate all of the facts and
circumstances of a given case. And it wisely preserved sufficient
flexibility to allow the judge to depart from the guidelines when
necessary.
This bill would substantially eliminate that safety valve, barring
judges from making ``downward departures'' in a large number of cases--
effectively transforming the federal guidelines into a system of
mandatory minimum sentences.
When Chief Justice Rehnquist learned of this proposal, he wrote:
``this legislation, is enacted, would do serious harm to the basic
structure of the sentencing guideline system and would seriously impair
the ability of courts to impose just and responsible sentences.''
Justice Rehnquist is certainly no liberal. But even his concerns have
been brushed aside.
Similar opposition was expressed by the Judicial Conference of the
United States, the American Bar Association, the Leadership Conference
on Civil Rights, the Washington Legal Foundation, the Cato Institute
and many other groups and individuals. All to no avail.
It is true that during conference, a number of improvements were made
to the original language. But the final version retains many features
of the original, and barely begins to address the concerns raised by
the Chief Justice.
Title IV of the bill prohibits all downward departures in connection
with child-related offenses and sex offenses. In all other cases, it
discourages judges from making downward departures by subjecting them
to burdensome reporting requirements and Justice Department scrutiny if
they do so. And it directs the Sentencing Commission to amend the
guidelines to ensure that downward departures are ``substantially
reduced.''
Since there has been virtually no debate on these radical proposals,
we must guess at the reasons for them. Apparently, they are based on
the belief that judges have been abusing their departure power by
handing down overly lenient sentences.
No doubt errors and abuses occur. Judges are human, and some
sentences will be too lenient while others are too harsh. But the
system already provides a remedy for this: the government can and does
appeal downward departures it considers inappropriate. And it wins
approximately 80 percent of such appeals.
The truth is that the vast majority of the downward departures are
sought, not by the judge, but by the government itself. Of the nearly
20,000 downward departures granted in 2001, 79 percent were requested
by the prosecution--most in return for the cooperation of the
defendant, and the rest in five Mexican border districts in which the
government uses departures to clear cases more quickly.
If the sponsors of the bill have concerns about the rate of downward
departures, the Justice department is where they should be making
inquiries. As a former prosecutor, I can see plenty of reasons to
question the overuse of departures as a law enforcement tool.
Inf act, the one thing that pleases me about the language as it came
out of conference is that it instructs the Sentencing Commission to
review not just those downward departures that are initiated by the
sentencing judge but all downward departures--whether requested by the
prosecution or the defense. I certainly hope that in fulfilling the
congressional mandate to review these departures and ensure that their
incidence is ``substantially reduced,'' the Commission will do so in a
thorough and even-handed way.
Nevertheless, if there is a problem with departures, depriving judges
of the ability to exercise discretion cannot be the answer. A rigid,
mechanical system of sentences cannot do justice--either to the accused
or to the society to which the millions we imprison today will one day
return.
Mr. HOEKSTRA. Mr. Speaker, I speak in support of the conference
report to S. 151, the PROTECT Act, which creates new and increases
already existing penalties for crimes against children, as well as
provides for the national coordination of the AMBER Alert
communications network. An important provision in S. 151 doubles the
authorization level for the National Center for Missing and Exploited
Children (NCMEC), which serves as the national resource center and
clearinghouse to aid missing and exploited children and their families.
The conference report also makes other changes to require Regional
Children's Advocacy Centers grantees to provide information to the
Attorney General on the use of funds for evaluation of community
response to child abuse, and coordinates the operation of a Cyber-
Tipline to provide online users an effective means of reporting
Internet-related child sexual exploitation in the areas of distribution
of child pornography, online enticement of children for sexual acts,
and child prostitution.
The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children is a private
non-profit organization, mandated by Congress, working in cooperation
with the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention within
the U.S. Department of Justice. It is a critical resource for aiding
over 18,000 law enforcement agencies throughout the nation in their
search for missing children.
The Center is uniquely positioned to access vital information to aid
in the search and recovery of missing kids. It is the only child
protection non-profit organization with access to the FBI's National
Crime Information Center (NCIC) Missing Person, Wanted Person, and
Unidentified Person Files; the National Law Enforcement
Telecommunications System (NLETS); and the Federal Parent Locator
Service (FPLS). Additionally, it is the only organization operating a
24-hour toll-free Hotline for the recovery of missing children in
cooperation with the U.S. Department of Justice. It is also the sole
organization operating a 24-hour, toll-free child pornography tip-line
in cooperation with the U.S. Customs Service and the U.S. Postal
Inspection Service.
Mr. Speaker, it is clear that the National Center for Missing and
Exploited Children does our country and our nation's families a great
service in the fight to keep our nation's children safe. I want to
congratulate my colleagues for quickly resolving the differences
between the House and Senate bills and I urge their support for final
passage.
Mr. HONDA. Mr. Speaker, it is with a troubled heart that I will be
voting for the PROTECT Act today. The benefits of a national AMBER
Alert network are undeniable, and I cannot support any further delay on
its implementation. However, I do not believe that this Conference
Report will make good law, and I fervently hope that Congress will soon
repeal the egregious provisions that have been included. Though the
Conference Committee was able to moderate the bill somewhat, it is
still chock-full of what I considered to be bad policy. Regardless of
what one thinks of these provisions, they should have received
independent consideration and deliberation, rather than being tied to,
and slowing down, a need as pressing as AMBER.
I am particularly disturbed by the parts of this legislation that
would eliminate judicial discretion. For example, Section 109 of this
measure would fundamentally alter the carefully crafted and balanced
system established by the Sentencing Reform Act. It undermines our
independent judiciary, as well as the United States Sentencing
Commission. It is a reversal of existing law that was inserted during
floor debate, without committee hearings or any semblance of due
deliberation. Unfortunately, this is all to emblematic of how this bill
has been handled in this body.
Mr. Speaker, I will vote for this bill because it is well past time
to pass an AMBER Alert network act, but instead of marking an
unmitigated legislative achievement, the passage of this omnibus
measure will be a cause for serious self-reflection on what we are
doing here.
Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Speaker, I had hoped that we would have been able to
come together to reach consensus on how best to deal with the difficult
problem of child abduction in this country and to pass an AMBER alert
bill. The recent rash of child abductions clearly indicate that
additional steps need to be taken to protect our children from sexual
predators.
Unfortunately, the conference was delayed and hung up by provisions
which have nothing to do with Amber alert and which should have been
dealt with separately. First and foremost, is the highly controversial
amendment offered by Rep. Tom Feeney, which would totally hamstring any
remaining discretion federal judges have in making sentencing
determinations. This provision was added on the floor two weeks ago
without proper hearings or committee debate and clearly is not ready
for prime time.
It is opposed by Chief Justice Rehnquist, by the Federal Judicial
Conference, by the American Bar Association, by the Federal Bar
Association, by the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, by the NAACP
and by countless law professors, prosecutors, and public defenders.
In a nutshell, the Freeney Amendment, as introduced, would make it
next to impossible
[[Page H3075]]
for federal judges to reduce sentences below the guidelines, even where
mitigating factors such a military service, community involvement and
youth are present. Guess who is going to be harmed disproportionally by
this harsh approach to sentencing--minorities in general and African
Americans in particular.
Consider the fact that a full 12 percent of African American men aged
20-34 are in prison--more than 8 times the comparable rate of white
males in the same age group. According to the Bureau of Justice
Statistics, nearly one out of every three black men will spend time in
prison during their lifetime.
So when you toughten sentencing, as the Feeney amendment would do,
you should know that you are busting up African American families and
decimating our inner cities. You are also creating massive problems
concerning reentry when these individuals leave the prison system in
another 10 or 15 years. The very least we should do is to leave these
critical life decisions in the reasonable discretion of the Federal
judge who is closest to the situation. To use the popular AMBER alert
measure to alter this long standing principle, and without proper
hearings or consideration is to me shameful.
Now my friends on the other side of the aisle will claim not to
worry, that they fixed the Feeney amendment which they will say is
limited to sex offenses. But the truth is that the revised Feeney
language would radically alter the sentencing regime for every single
criminal case in the legal system. It does this by adding a whole host
of new procedural requirements for a judge to show any form of mercy in
all federal cases. The bill also adds new requirements on the Justice
Department and the Sentencing Commission with regard to downward
departures in all Federal cases. At the end of the day, what we will
have is something very close to the original purpose of the Feeney
Amendment--mandatory minimums in all federal criminal cases.
There are other problems in the bill before us, including new death
penalties, eliminating statutes of limitation, and criminalizing so-
called ``RAVE'' parties. As a result of these provisions and the very
broad based and dangerous Feeney amendment, I must reluctantly urge a
NO vote on this short sighted measure.
[April 9, 2003]
Vote No on Child Abduction Prevention Act (S. 151), Which Deprives
Federal Judges of Discretion to Make the Punishment Fit the Crime
Dear Representative: On Thursday, April 10, the House will
consider the Child Abduction Prevention Act (S. 151), Title
IV of which would radically limit federal judicial discretion
to impose just sentences for federal offenses. This measure,
which was attached to the House child abduction bill without
committee considerations, goes far beyond any effort to crack
down on child abductors. It overrules a key Supreme Court
sentencing decision and constitutes a drastic encroachment on
the independence of the judiciary and the U.S. Sentencing
Commission. Such far-reaching changes in the laws and
procedures that govern our federal criminal justice system
should not be undertaken without hearings and meaningful
debate.
Title IV directs the Sentencing Commission to limit a
federal judge's power to depart from the Sentencing
Guidelines. Departures are in integral part of the Sentencing
Reform Act that Congress enacted in 1984. That bipartisan
reform struck as balance between uniformity and judicial
discretion and was enacted after years of study and
consideration of problems in the previous sentencing system.
Congress understood that a guidelines system that encompasses
every relevant sentencing factor is neither possible nor
desirable. Departures are a necessary and healthy part of the
guideline system.
Departures do not reflect an avoidance of the law by
federal judges but rather their conscientious compliance with
the Congressional mandate to impose a guideline sentence
unless the court finds a circumstance not adequately
considered by the Commission that warrants a departure.
The Sentencing Reform Act already contains substantial
limits on judicial discretion. The overwhelming majority of
federal sentences, other than those requested by the
government to reward defendants who have provided assistance
in prosecuting others or to manage the caseload in border
districts, are within the guidelines written by the
Sentencing Commission, which is appointed by the President
and confirmed by the Senate. Judges may only depart from the
guidelines if the case involves circumstances not adequately
considered by the Commission. The government may appeal any
downward departure.
Title IV overturns an important Supreme Court decision. In
the 1996 case of Koon v. United States, which was in relevant
part a unanimous decision, the Supreme Court interpreted the
departure standard in a way that limited departures but left
some room for judicial discretion. Title IV of S. 151
recklessly overturns that landmark decision, which recognized
that departures are an integral part of the guidelines system
that seeks ``to reduce unjustified disparities and so reach
toward the evenhandedness and neutrality that are the
distinguishing marks of any principled system of justice [but
that at the same time preserve the] uniform and constant * *
* Federal judicial tradition for the sentencing judge to
consider every convicted person as an individual and every
case as a unique study in the human failings that sometimes
mitigate, sometimes magnify, the crime and the punishment to
ensue.'' 518 U.S. 81, 113 (1996). The current bill overturns
the basic structure of the carefully crafted guidelines
system, without meaningful input from judges or practitioners
and based on numbers called into question by the statistics
maintained by the Sentencing Commission.
Departures preserve some measure of fairness in the
Sentencing Guidelines. Without the discretionary authority to
depart, all crimes regardless of the circumstances would have
to be sentenced exactly the same; one size must fit all,
predetermined by the body of experts sitting in Washington,
D.C. The Sentencing Guidelines will become a little more than
mandatory minimum sentencing laws, which cause rampant
injustice and unwarranted racial disparity.
The departure process is already under review. Departures
are the one area of the Guidelines were the Commission can
see if its sentencing policies are working or whether an
adjustment needs to be made. A high departure rate in certain
types of cases can indicate flaws in the guidelines that the
Commission needs to address. This is the careful system of
checks and balances that Congress crafted when it created the
guidelines. The Sentencing Commission has repeatedly
demonstrated its willingness to police the departure power
and recently announced that it will be conducting a study of
the issue. We urge Congress to let this process work.
Thank you for considering our views. Please contact Kyle
O'Dowd (202-872-8600, ext. 226) for the National Association
of Criminal Defense Lawyers or Ronald Weich for the
Leadership Conference on Civil Rights (202-788-1818) if we
can provide more information.
Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, National Association
of Criminal Defense Lawyers, National Legal Aid and Defender
Association, National Association of Federal Defenders,
Families Against Mandatory Minimums.
Mr.SENSENBRENNER. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time,
and I move the previous question on the conference report.
The previous question was ordered.
The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. LaHood). The question is on the
conference report.
The question was taken; and the Speaker pro tempore announced that
the ayes appeared to have it.
Mr. SENSENBRENNER. Mr. Speaker, I object to the vote on the ground
that a quorum is not present and make the point of order that a quorum
is not present.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Evidently a quorum is not present.
The Sergeant at Arms will notify absent Members.
Pursuant to clause 8 of rule XX, this 15-minute vote on adoption of
the conference report will be followed by 5-minute votes on motions to
suspend the rules and agree to House Concurrent Resolution 141 and
House Resolution 165, as amended, which were debated yesterday.
The vote was taken by electronic device, and there were--yeas 400,
nays 25, answered ``present'' 2, not voting 8, as follows:
[Roll No. 127]
YEAS--400
Abercrombie
Ackerman
Aderholt
Akin
Alexander
Allen
Andrews
Baca
Bachus
Baird
Baker
Baldwin
Ballenger
Barrett (SC)
Bartlett (MD)
Barton (TX)
Bass
Beauprez
Becerra
Bell
Bereuter
Berkley
Berman
Berry
Biggert
Bilirakis
Bishop (GA)
Bishop (NY)
Bishop (UT)
Blackburn
Blumenauer
Blunt
Boehlert
Boehner
Bonilla
Bonner
Bono
Boozman
Boswell
Boucher
Boyd
Bradley (NH)
Brady (PA)
Brown (OH)
Brown (SC)
Brown, Corrine
Brown-Waite, Ginny
Burgess
Burns
Burr
Burton (IN)
Buyer
Calvert
Camp
Cannon
Cantor
Capito
Capps
Capuano
Cardin
Cardoza
Carson (IN)
Carson (OK)
Carter
Case
Castle
Chabot
Chocola
Clyburn
Coble
Cole
Collins
Combest
Cooper
Costello
Cox
Cramer
Crane
Crowley
Cubin
Culberson
Cunningham
Davis (AL)
Davis (CA)
Davis (FL)
Davis, Jo Ann
Davis, Tom
Deal (GA)
DeFazio
DeGette
DeLauro
DeLay
DeMint
Deutsch
Diaz-Balart, L.
Diaz-Balart, M.
Dicks
Dingell
Doggett
Doolittle
Doyle
Dreier
Duncan
Dunn
Edwards
Ehlers
Emanuel
Emerson
Engel
English
[[Page H3076]]
Eshoo
Etheridge
Evans
Everett
Farr
Fattah
Feeney
Ferguson
Filner
Flake
Fletcher
Foley
Forbes
Ford
Fossella
Franks (AZ)
Frelinghuysen
Frost
Gallegly
Garrett (NJ)
Gerlach
Gibbons
Gilchrest
Gillmor
Gingrey
Gonzalez
Goode
Goodlatte
Gordon
Goss
Granger
Graves
Green (TX)
Green (WI)
Greenwood
Grijalva
Gutierrez
Gutknecht
Hall
Harman
Harris
Hart
Hastert
Hastings (FL)
Hastings (WA)
Hayes
Hayworth
Hefley
Hensarling
Herger
Hill
Hinchey
Hinojosa
Hobson
Hoeffel
Hoekstra
Holden
Holt
Honda
Hooley (OR)
Hostettler
Hoyer
Hulshof
Hunter
Hyde
Inslee
Isakson
Israel
Issa
Istook
Jackson-Lee (TX)
Janklow
Jefferson
Jenkins
John
Johnson (CT)
Johnson (IL)
Johnson, E. B.
Johnson, Sam
Jones (NC)
Kanjorski
Kaptur
Keller
Kelly
Kennedy (MN)
Kennedy (RI)
Kildee
Kind
King (IA)
King (NY)
Kingston
Kirk
Kleczka
Kline
Knollenberg
Kolbe
LaHood
Lampson
Langevin
Lantos
Larsen (WA)
Larson (CT)
Latham
LaTourette
Leach
Levin
Lewis (CA)
Lewis (KY)
Linder
Lipinski
LoBiondo
Lofgren
Lowey
Lucas (KY)
Lucas (OK)
Lynch
Majette
Maloney
Manzullo
Markey
Marshall
Matheson
Matsui
McCarthy (NY)
McCollum
McCotter
McCrery
McGovern
McHugh
McInnis
McIntyre
McKeon
McNulty
Meehan
Meek (FL)
Meeks (NY)
Menendez
Mica
Michaud
Millender-McDonald
Miller (FL)
Miller (MI)
Miller (NC)
Miller, Gary
Miller, George
Moore
Moran (KS)
Moran (VA)
Murphy
Murtha
Musgrave
Myrick
Napolitano
Neal (MA)
Nethercutt
Ney
Northup
Norwood
Nunes
Nussle
Obey
Olver
Ortiz
Osborne
Ose
Otter
Owens
Oxley
Pallone
Pascrell
Pastor
Pearce
Pelosi
Pence
Peterson (MN)
Peterson (PA)
Petri
Pickering
Pitts
Platts
Pombo
Pomeroy
Porter
Portman
Price (NC)
Pryce (OH)
Putnam
Quinn
Radanovich
Rahall
Ramstad
Rangel
Regula
Rehberg
Renzi
Reyes
Reynolds
Rodriguez
Rogers (AL)
Rogers (KY)
Rogers (MI)
Rohrabacher
Ros-Lehtinen
Ross
Rothman
Roybal-Allard
Royce
Ruppersberger
Ryan (OH)
Ryan (WI)
Ryun (KS)
Sanchez, Linda T.
Sanchez, Loretta
Sandlin
Saxton
Schakowsky
Schiff
Schrock
Scott (GA)
Sensenbrenner
Serrano
Sessions
Shadegg
Shaw
Shays
Sherman
Sherwood
Shimkus
Shuster
Simmons
Simpson
Skelton
Slaughter
Smith (MI)
Smith (NJ)
Smith (TX)
Smith (WA)
Snyder
Solis
Souder
Spratt
Stearns
Stenholm
Strickland
Stupak
Sullivan
Sweeney
Tancredo
Tanner
Tauscher
Tauzin
Taylor (MS)
Taylor (NC)
Terry
Thomas
Thompson (CA)
Thompson (MS)
Thornberry
Tiahrt
Tiberi
Toomey
Turner (OH)
Turner (TX)
Udall (CO)
Udall (NM)
Upton
Van Hollen
Velazquez
Visclosky
Vitter
Walden (OR)
Walsh
Wamp
Watson
Waxman
Weiner
Weldon (FL)
Weldon (PA)
Weller
Wexler
Whitfield
Wicker
Wilson (NM)
Wilson (SC)
Wolf
Woolsey
Wu
Wynn
Young (AK)
Young (FL)
NAYS--25
Ballance
Clay
Conyers
Cummings
Davis (IL)
Frank (MA)
Jackson (IL)
Jones (OH)
Kilpatrick
Kucinich
Lee
Lewis (GA)
McDermott
Mollohan
Nadler
Oberstar
Paul
Payne
Sabo
Sanders
Scott (VA)
Stark
Towns
Waters
Watt
ANSWERED ``PRESENT''--2
Delahunt
Tierney
NOT VOTING--8
Brady (TX)
Crenshaw
Davis (TN)
Dooley (CA)
Gephardt
Houghton
McCarthy (MO)
Rush
Announcement by the Speaker Pro Tempore
The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. LaHood) (during the vote). The Chair
reminds the Members there are 2 minutes left to vote.
{time} 1234
Messrs. BALLANCE, DAVIS of Illinois, LEWIS of Georgia and CUMMINGS,
Ms. LEE and Mrs. JONES of Ohio changed their vote from ``yea'' to
``nay.''
Mr. TIERNEY changed his vote from ``yea'' to ``present.''
So the conference report was agreed to.
The result of the vote was announced as above recorded.
A motion to reconsider was laid on the table.
Stated for:
Mr. DAVIS of Tennessee. Mr. Speaker, on rollcall No. 127, had I been
present, I would have voted ``yea.''
Mr. RUSH. Mr. Speaker, on rollcall No. 127, I was unavoidably
detained in a meeting with my regional constituents. Had I been
present, I would have voted ``yea.''
____________________