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Volume 5 Number 1 DEATH PENALTY BILL MOVING THROUGH THE SENATE
The Washington Office of the American Civil Liberties Union is coordinating opposition to a bill which provides that the death penalty can be imposed for peacetime espionage and attempted assassination of the President. The Supreme Court has held that because of the punishment's severity, it is appropriate only in extremely limited circumstances and then only in accordance with tightly drawn procedures (Furman v. Georgia, 408 U.S. 233 (1972)). This bill attempts to outline acceptable procedures for federal offenses.
The bill (S.239) was voted out of the Senate Judiciary Committee (12-6), but opponents were successful in adding amendments to limit the reach of the bill.
Amendments were added to bar the execution of minors; to preclude the execution of an accomplice for an offense causing death without proof that the defendant killed, attempted to kill or contemplated that lethal force would be used; and to clarify that the sentencer must consider all mitigating factors offered by a defendant as grounds for imposing a sentence other than death.
Opponents of the bill are determined to force Senate debate on troubling issues surrounding imposition of the death penalty. These include discrimination in the imposition of the death penalty, the lack of evidence showing a deterrent effect, and moral and constitutional concerns over the method of execution. Senator Carl Levin (D-MI) has agreed to lead the extended debate on the bill, to be joined by Senators Cohen, Evans, Harkin, Kennedy, Kerry, Mathias, Matsunaga, Metzenbaum, and Simon.
In the House, hearings were held on April 16 and May 7, 1936.
The issue of discrimination
One of the reasons many civil rights groups oppose the death penalty bill is the discriminatory manner in which the penalty is meted out. The ACLU reports:
A careful study of the death penalty between 1972 and 1977 showed that black killers and killers of whites were substantially more likely to receive the death sentence than others. In Florida, for example, a black offender convicted of killing a white person was forty times more likely to be sentenced to death than someone (white or black) who killed a black person.
A more recent study of death sentencing in Georgia, from 1976 to 1980, revealed that an individual convicted of murder was ten times more likely to receive a death sentence if the victim was white. During this period, 35 whites killed blacks, but only one was sentenced to death. Although 310 blacks killed other blacks, only eleven received the death penalty.
The NAACP has historically opposed the death penalty as inhumane, violative of the 8th amendment to the U.S. Constitution and discriminatorily applied against blacks.
A preliminary review of the literature by the National Council of La Raza found some evidence that Hispanics are discriminated against in capital punishment sentencing, and that the lives of Hispanic victims like Black victims are undervalued in the sentencing process. That is, those who kill Hispanics and Blacks are less likely to receive the death penalty than those who kill whites. Analysis of crime statistics for the state of Texas revealed that, regardless of the race of the offender, those who killed Whites received the death penalty about 40 percent of the time. Offenders who killed Blacks or Hispanics received the death penalty less than 1 percent of the time.
Moreover, the Federal Public Defender for the District of New Mexico in a letter to Senator Jeff Bingaman detailed the racially disparate impact that a federal death penalty would have on Indians.
If the current version of S. 239 were to pass, it would result in the applicability of the death penalty to all first degree murder cases [on federal land] ... In New Mexico the death penalty can only be imposed in those instances of first degree murder where there are... aggravating circumstances ... The practical effect of this disparity would be that Indians [on federal reservations] would be subject to the death penalty in circumstances where other New Mexicans would not be. For example, any premeditated first degree murder, or murder in the course of arson, burglary, or robbery would carry a death penalty for a reservation Indian but not for a non-Indian New Mexican prosecuted in state court.
The Defender urged the Senator "to seek the deletion of murder and rape on federal land from the proposed death penalty bill for the reason that a federal death penalty will have a racially disparate impact."
The Leadership Conference on Civil Rights in a letter to the Senate stated: "as civil rights advocates, we are particularly concerned with the racially discriminatory manner in which the death penalty has been sought and obtained in most parts of the nation. Data collected by the NAACP Legal Defense Fund unequivocally show a link between the imposition of the death penalty and the race of the defendant..."
Persons interested in receiving additional information on the bill or learning about the coalition opposing the death penalty should contact Diann Rust-
J. Tierney, ACLU Washington Office, 122 Maryland Ave., N.E., Washington, D.C. 20002, (202)544-1631.
  
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