LORENA BOBBITT INSANE, NOT GUILTY
KNIFE-WIELDING WIFE PUSHED ISSUE OF ABUSE
St. Louis Post-Dispatch (MO)
January 22, 1994
https://infoweb.newsbank.com/
Lorena Bobbitt was acquitted by reason of temporary insanity Friday by jurors who agreed that an "irresistible impulse" provoked by abuse had compelled her to cut off her husband's penis. She was committed to a mental hospital for observation.
Lorena Bobbitt stood stoically next to her attorneys as she listened to the jury's verdict. The decision ended a two-week trial that riveted television viewers who followed every detail of the Bobbitts' sex lives as it unfolded in testimony on CNN and Court TV.
One of Lorena Bobbitt's attorneys, Lisa Kemler, said afterward that Lorena Bobbitt apparently had not heard the verdict and asked: "`Is that good?' We told her it was good."
Outside the courtroom, a group of about 50 Hispanic supporters of Lorena Bobbitt erupted in cheers and chants of "not guilty, not guilty" in both Spanish and English after word of the verdict reached them.
Later, one of her closest friends read a message from Lorena Bobbitt directed at abused women. "She encourages you to reach out, talk to someone today," Janna Bisutti said.
She said Lorena Bobbitt also hoped to pursue a good education, marriage and family. "If publicity of her abuse helps one person find freedom, then all of this was not in vain," Bisutti said.
In a statement, the National Organization for Women said that despite the acquittal, a strong federal law on violence against women was necessary. "We're glad the jury rejected the twisted argument that a battered woman should be locked up in a prison cell," said NOW Executive Vice President Kim Gandy. "(But) this whole saga drives home the need for swift passage of a comprehensive version of the Violence Against Women Act."
The founder of a "men's rights" group, the National Organization for Men, said the verdict meant that every man in America was now vulnerable to the kind of attack that Lorena Bobbitt inflicted on her husband.
"It's a tragedy, but I'm afraid it's now open season on men," said Sidney Siller, founder of what he called "the country's largest group defending the interests of heterosexual men."
John Bobbitt, who was acquitted in November of marital sexual assault for allegedly raping his wife shortly before she mutilated him, checked out of his hotel Thursday and was not at the courthouse.
As required by Virginia law, Judge Herman A. Whisenant Jr. placed Lorena Bobbitt in custody to undergo psychiatric evaluation.
Blair Howard, another defense attorney, called the verdict "a great step forward for Lorena in the healing process."
Lorena Bobbitt was taken to Central State Hospital in Petersburg, where state doctors and at least one outside expert will examine her. They must report back to the judge within 45 days.
Prosecutor Paul B. Ebert said after the verdict that he has "a certain amount of sympathy for Mrs. Bobbitt, but that doesn't justify what she did."
"Hopefully, if she needs help, she will get it," Ebert said.
The jury of seven women and five men had sent out questions to the judge about psychiatric reports on Lorena Bobbitt and the judge's instructions on how to weigh evidence about her state of mind. It announced its verdict after 7 1/2 hours of deliberations over two days.
Lorena Bobbitt, 24, was charged with malicious wounding, which carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison. The jury also considered unlawful wounding, a lesser felony charge that carries no more than five years in prison. She also could have been deported. Jurors could have acquitted her outright if they had concluded that she acted in self-defense.
Attorneys for Lorena Bobbitt argued that her four-year marriage was a "reign of terror" in which John Bobbitt sometimes beat her and sexually assaulted her. The couple separated twice but were living together at the time John Bobbitt was cut. They are now seeking a divorce.
Lorena Bobbitt said she was raped early June 23 when her husband came home from a night of drinking with a friend. Afterward, she went into the kitchen for a glass of water, saw a knife by the dim light of the refrigerator and took it into the bedroom, where she cut off her husband's penis.
Her attorneys said years of physical and sexual abuse triggered an "irresistible impulse" in Lorena Bobbitt. They said she also was motivated by self-defense because she said Bobbitt had threatened to track her down and rape her if she left him.
Prosecutors tried to depict Lorena Bobbitt as a vengeful wife who attacked her husband out of anger and maintained that she could not claim self-defense because Bobbitt was asleep when he was mutilated.
Bobbitt's penis was reattached surgically the same day it was severed. Doctors say it may take two years to find out if he'll fully recover.
Domestic abuse bill's OK likely
Republican, The (Springfield, MA)
January 22, 1994
https://infoweb.newsbank.com/
U.S. Reps. Richard E. Neal and John Olver, D-Mass., told members of the Domestic Violence Task Force they believe federal legislation that includes $700 million in grants to prevent domestic abuse and rape will be approved by late February or early March.
The Violence Against Women Act has been approved by the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate and will be studied by a soon-to-be-formed conference committee which will come up with a compromise to go before both bodies, Olver said.
Because the legislation, which Olver and Neal co-sponsored, was approved by a 421-0 vote in the House, Neal said he expects the compromise measure will be approved.
Provisions include
The provisions of the bill include:
- Making domestic violation an act of gender bias and therefore a violation of civil rights.
- Making it a federal offense to cross state lines to contact a spouse or partner and commit violence against them.
- Creating new evidence rules to exclude details of the prior sexual conduct of the victim and what type of clothing a woman wears from trial.
- Requiring cross-state enforcement of restraining orders.
- Funding a national, toll-free domestic violence hot line.
- Funding grants for law enforcement agencies and rape prevention grounds to pay for rape prevention programs such treatment for sex offenders.
Neal said the need for such legislation was made clear to him while his wife was working as a victim/witness advocate for the Hampden County District Attorney's office many years ago.
"This legislation is as important as anything we do today," Neal said.
Kathy Alexander, the coordinator of community education and staff development and training for the Northwestern District Attorney's office, urged the two Congressman to see that the bill insures that grant money goes to existing agencies, not to create new agencies.
Existing agencies have been working for years and, in many cases, struggling financially, so they should be given priority for the money, Alexander said.
"It would be a tremendous spirit to put into a very fine piece of legislation," she said.
Neal and Olver agreed and asked people who have other comments or suggestions to write their offices.
The Domestic Violence Task Force is a group of human services and law enforcement professionals from Hampshire and Franklin County which is looking for ways to stop domestic abuse.
DON'T MAKE FEDERAL CASE OF THE BIZARRE BOBBITTS
News & Record (Greensboro, NC)
EDITORIAL
January 25, 1994
https://infoweb.newsbank.com/
The sooner forgotten, the better.
Someone speculated the other day that if Lorena Bobbitt had aimed a little higher and stabbed her husband to death instead of dismembering him, most Americans would never have noticed the case. Certainly it would not have been all over America's front pages and TV screens for weeks.
What's the point? Perhaps that domestic violence in general is far less interesting to the news media than bizarre aberrations.
Like it or not, we all now know far, far more about the strange and pathetic marriage of John Wayne and Lorena Bobbitt than we do about either the typical, peaceful marriage or typical marital violence. To think usefully about this serious social problem, one almost has to forget all one knows about the hapless Bobbitts.
One thing about this case that does have universal implications is the inability of Lorena Bobbitt to get away from an abusive husband. If America does nothing else to combat domestic violence, it will have taken a giant step toward solving the problem if it finds a way to provide refuge for its victims.
It is right and reasonable for society to insist that an abused spouse leave rather than resort to a gun or a knife, but that advice is of little use to a woman who has nowhere to turn - or at least thinks she has none.
From a legal standpoint, there is a lot to criticize in the acquittals of both John Bobbitt and Lorena Bobbitt. In the first instance, the verdict ignored compelling evidence of physical abuse. In the second, jurors leaped to embrace an insanity, or "irresistible impulse," defense in the face of strong expert testimony to the contrary. Apparently, this was seen as a way of expressing sympathy for the woman (and who didn't share it) without seeming to endorse her crime.
Some feminists will be uncomfortable with attaching the "insanity" label to what they regard as a rational response to marital rape. Others are justifiably troubled by a verdict that seems to waive individual moral responsibility for what was clearly a willful, criminal act. Fortunately, a jury's acquittal is not a legal precedent for anything. Unfortunately, in such a heavily publicized case, the effect could be to encourage similar violent acts.
One thing is clear: Any effort to use this case as a vehicle for promoting the Violence Against Women Act pending in Congress must be resisted. While containing some useful provisions, Sen. Joe Biden's bill is at its core a wrong-headed effort to turn sexual assault and rape into federal crimes and to transform them from individual acts of violence into symptoms of social pathology.
Men do not rape because they are men, or because they hate women. It is a crime of violence that deserves the severest punishment. The sooner America forgets John and Lorena Bobbitt, the sooner we'll think clearly again about rape.
Women often know attackers
Many violent crime victims are assaulted in their homes
Kansas City Star, The (MO)
February 2, 1994
https://infoweb.newsbank.com/
Two-thirds of the women who are victims of violent crimes are attacked by a husband, boyfriend, relative or acquaintance, a new Justice Department report says.
Women are 10 times more likely than men to be victimized by someone they know, the Bureau of Justice Statistics study found.
The report, released Sunday, indicates that the American home is becoming an increasingly violent place for women, experts said.
"It's always been a myth that it's safer for women in their own home," said Rita Smith, coordinator of the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence in Denver. "A large percentage of women would be safer on the street than at home. Most women believe that if someone loves you, they won't hurt you. " Of the attacks on women, 28 percent of the offenders were intimates such as husbands or boyfriends and 39 percent more were acquaintances or relatives, the report states.
In 1988, the last time the study was conducted, women were found to be six times more likely than men to have been attacked by someone they knew.
Overall, men are more likely to be victims of violent crime.
But while the rate of violent crimes against males has decreased since the bureau began its annual victimization surveys in 1973, the rate against females has remained relatively constant, researchers found.
The report is based on 400,000 interviews with women conducted between 1987 and 1991, said Ronet Bachman, a bureau statistician. It included rape, robbery and assault but excluded murder and kidnapping.
Leslie Wolfe, executive director of the Center for Women Policy Studies in Washington, said women's safety was an issue everywhere, not just in the home.
"Women are not safe from male violence in any setting," she said.
Bachman, who wrote the report, said the recent figures should inform both women and lawmakers about the problem of domestic violence.
Congress is considering legislation that includes sweeping changes in laws to protect women against violence.
According to the bureau survey, about 2.5 million females 12 and older are the victims of violent crimes, or attempted crimes, in a given year.
One in four attacks involved a gun or knife, the study found.
Young African-American and Hispanic women were more likely to be attacked than other women.
The bureau's annual victimization survey and periodic reports such as this one are aimed at providing a more complete look at crime than the FBI's annual Uniform Crime Reports, which are a based on police reports, said Bachman.
"More than 50 percent of rapes and assaults are never reported to police. This report provides a wealth of information that other surveys don't," she said. "Our survey truly represents American women. " Bachman also said researchers found that women who were attacked by someone close to them were less likely to report the incident.
An in-depth study of violence against women is not included in the bureau's annual survey because it takes about five years to compile enough statistics for an accurate study, she said.
After the 1988 study, Bachman said, bureau interviewers began asking women specific questions about their attackers.
"These are very sensitive questions that are just now being asked of assault victims," she said.
Smith said violence against women must be addressed from every angle through courts, legislation, schools and families.
"There is both a social and criminal aspect to these types of assaults," she said. "We need to counsel people about how to act in relationships. Our society has been based on the quick fix of a violent response for far too long. " The Violence Against Women Act, aimed at protecting women from domestic violence and sexual assault, swept through Congress last year, emerging with more than 300 sponsors.
DOMESTIC VIOLENCE GROWING, SHALALA SAYS
Orlando Sentinel, The (FL)
March 12, 1994
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Domestic violence has become about as common as childbirth in America, constituting a virtual epidemic of 4 million incidents a year, Secretary of Health and Human Services Donna Shalala said Friday.
In a speech to the American Medical Association, Shalala praised doctors for helping uncover the extent of abuse of women, children and the elderly, and asked their support for Clinton administration programs to counter what she called ''domestic terrorism.''
''Domestic violence is just about as common as giving birth,'' she said, adding there were up to 4 million assaults on women annually, and that between 20 percent and 30 percent of women's injuries treated in emergency rooms stem from physical abuse from their partners.
Shalala said the administration had addressed the issue in several ways, including the $1 billion Family Preservation Act, which is a multipronged initiative that includes a parenting skills program to help people find alternatives to ''blow-ups and fighting.''
Shalala said the administration hopes Congress will pass the pending Violence Against Women Act in the crime bill.
It would set aside $1.8 billion over five years to aid police prosecutors, women's shelters and community prevention programs, and give Shalala authority to establish a hot line for victims of domestic abuse.
Anti-violence bills have gap, Olver says
Republican, The (Springfield, MA)
March 31, 1994
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The House and Senate have both passed Violence Against Women bills but U.S. Rep. John Olver, D-Amherst, says neither provides enough funds for court advocates for battered women.
He filed legislation before the Easter break that would create a pilot program to provide increased funding - estimated at $15 million - in 10 states to hire more court advocates.
The House and Senate Violence Against Women Act (the more comprehensive Senate version provides $1.8 billion over three years) provides money for a 24-hour hotline for domestic abuse, more battered women shelters, education and training for police and court officials and day-care services.
But Olver said court advocates are the professionals who often get battered women in touch with the various agencies and services that are in the community to help them.
"It seems there is a gap," Olver said.
He said that court advocates can help battered victims long before they decide to press charges against their abusers.
He said that court advocates and battered women can be linked by social workers, police officers, battered women shelters as well as by the courts.
The advocates can assist women in obtaining restraining orders against abusive husbands and boyfriends as well as help them find safe housing and other services.
"Too often domestic violence victims don't seek protection because they are frightened and alone. What's needed is a system within the courts that will give victims the support they need," Olver said.
"For those seeking protection from domestic abusers, the court system is not always a friendly place. With experienced advocates trained specifically to help weed through the legal jargon and assist in safety planning, victims will get the protection that is their legal right," Olver said.
The Senate passed its $22 billion crime bill last November. The House was expected to take up its $15 billion omnibus crime package before Easter, but voting is delayed.
Gender-motivated violence bill seen as possibly unjust by ACLU
Washington Times, The (DC)
Author/Byline: Jeanne Cummings; COX NEWS SERVICE
April 12, 1994
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Tucked within the hundreds of pages that make up the far-reaching anti-crime bill working its way through Congress is a time bomb.
It's called the Violence Against Women Act, and it could allow a rape or domestic-violence victim to sue an attacker in civil court for monetary awards if the crime was gender-motivated.
"It is sticky. It is tough. But this is a real major breakthrough with the federal government saying we're going to take this stuff seriously," said Rep. Patricia Schroeder, Colorado Democrat.
Too sticky, too vague and possibly an injustice, say others.
"Although it contains some positive programs, the Violence Against Women Act has some punitive measures that we believe are extremely troubling," said Elizabeth Symonds, legislative director for the American Civil Liberties Union.
When Congress reconvened yesterday, the first item on the House agenda was passage of the crime bill, best known for its mandatory life sentence for three-time violent federal offenders, grants to build prisons, and money to hire more police.
The version of the Violence Against Women Act in the House bill is noncontroversial. It includes grants for programs to prevent domestic violence and rape, for rape-crisis and battered-women's centers, and for training of police and court personnel.
A House subcommittee led by Rep. Don Edwards, California Democrat, who is known as a civil libertarian, dropped the provision that would clear the way for civil lawsuits.
But the version of the crime bill already approved by the Senate includes that provision, and House advocates say they are confident they will restore it during a conference committee.
Under the Senate provision, every rape victim - male or female - may be able to sue their attackers for a monetary award. A wife could sue an abusive husband if she could prove the attacks were motivated by her sex.
Although the provision is written in a gender-neutral way, giving the same protection to men or young boys, women would be more likely to exercise the new remedy since they are more often the victims of rape and domestic violence.
Advocates say it is the first major federal initiative to combat domestic violence and rape, and Senate Judiciary Chairman Joseph R. Biden Jr., Delaware Democrat, has called the civil remedy provision "the heart of the bill.".
Opponents say the civil penalty provision is too vague and would produce a flood of new court cases, years of judicial interpretation and, ultimately, injustices.
Cathy Young, author of "Gender Wars," argued in the Wall Street Journal that the provision would protect an elderly woman beaten by her husband, but not if she is attacked by her daughter.
Miss Symonds asks: "How do we prove that gender-motivated violence has occurred? Is homosexual rape included? Will this be an effective deterrent to stopping violence on streets and homes?
"There are a number of questions that haven't been answered to our satisfaction," said Miss Symonds.
Mrs. Schroeder acknowledged that the civil remedy could produce new cases and require judges to establish acceptable ways of proving a crime is gender-motivated. But she said courts have succeeded in doing that with sexual harassment cases.
"Are they saying it's better for women to put up with this rather than flood the court system? Imagine using that same argument with drug cases," she said.
Despite the controversy, Mrs. Schroeder predicted that the civil penalty will be included in the final version of any comprehensive crime bill that reaches President Clinton's desk by summer.
"For all the muttering behind closed doors," Mrs. Schroeder said, "nobody wants to be on the other side of this because they realize how silly they would look if they had to make these arguments out loud."
A crime bill we can do without
Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The (GA)
Author/Byline: TEEPEN, TOM
April 17, 1994
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Columnist Tom Teepen argues against the passage of the U.S. Senate bill, the Violence Against Women Act. Congress could move effectively to protect women by crafting model sexual assault legislation and pushing the states to adopt it, and by creating a national computer network to give local jurisdictions access to information about repeat offenders. Setting up a federal track for gender-based lawsuits would incite legislation to do the same for victims of race- or religion-based crimes, now limited to federal civil redress only where conspiracy is involved. The Senate bill is far more certain to set off a landslide of litigation on courts already overwhelmed than to reduce violent crime against women.
Tom Teepen
If you think there are just too darn few lawsuits and that the glut of lawyers calls for a little make-work in order to keep them in the BMWs to which they have become accustomed, boy, does the U.S. Senate have a law for you.
It is called the Violence Against Women Act. It is in part well-intentioned, but it is also a sly political out for senators who oinked through the bollixed Anita Hill episode. Either way it is overwrought.
There are sound features.
Both the House and Senate versions would fund more rape-victim counseling, buy lighting for such sitting-duck venues as bus stops and limit evidence of a victim's manner of dress or sexual history as a defense. Restraining orders issued in one state would become enforceable in all others.
But there is modish anti-crime overkill in both, too - more pretrial detention, mandatory restitution even when it would put innocent families on the street.
And most disturbing, the Senate's bill, the politically stronger, would allow the victims of any crimes they believe were gender-motivated to sue in federal court.
Even suspects who were never charged and defendants who had been acquitted could be tried or retried on the civil courts' lower threshold of proof - a "preponderance of evidence" - rather than the criminal courts' standard of guilt "beyond a reasonable doubt."
The civil-rights feature is animated by the belief of victim feminism that all men are rapists waiting to happen and that the male-dominated criminal justice system covers up for them.
The point is ideological and empty and deserves, if any notice by law, rejection not enshrinement.
Most jurisdictions have strengthened their laws against sexual violence.
The stubborn gap between reported assaults and convictions - a gap common to all crimes but wider here - is explained more by the difficulty of prosecution when there are no witnesses, physical evidence is often absent and it is one person's word against another's than by boys-club indifference.
Is creating a special cause of civil action the solution?
Crime victims already can sue in state courts. The goal of the Senate legislation is less to secure justice than to use the high-visibility federal courts to billboard gender bias as the reason for crimes against women.
The long fight to get sexual assaults recognized as acts of violence, not of sex, is thus curiously undercut by an insistence on now characterizing them as, in effect, political acts.
Congress could move effectively to protect women by crafting model sexual assault legislation and pushing the states to adopt it, and by creating a national computer network to give local jurisdictions access to information about repeat offenders.
Setting up a federal track for gender-based lawsuits would incite legislation to do the same for victims of race-or religion-based crimes, now limited to federal civil redress only where conspiracy is involved.
The Senate bill is far more certain to set off a landslide of litigation on courts already overwhelmed than to reduce violent crime against women.
Tom Teepen is national columnist for Cox Newspapers. He is based in Atlanta.
SANDERS BEGRUDGINGLY BACKS CRIME BILL
USA TODAY (Arlington, VA)
April 21, 1994
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Rep. Bernard Sanders, I-Vt., voted with a majority of the House Thursday for a $28 billion crime bill he considers to be the lesser evil when compared to a similar Senate bill.
"The Senate bill is significantly worse than the House bill," Sanders said after the vote. Sanders said he liked the mix of programs designed to keep young people out of trouble and prison.
The bill, which passed by a 285-141 vote, includes $13.5 billion in prison grants, $9 billion for prevention programs and more than 65 new death penalty provisions.
The House and Senate will now assign negotiators to work out differences between their respective bills. Like the House bill, the $22 billion Senate bill contains money for prevention programs and extends the death penalty to more than 50 new crimes.
Both bills are heavy on punishment rather than prevention, Sanders said. He believes the final bill will be worse than the House version, but said even if that happens "I would be very, very reluctant to vote against it."
His ideal crime bill would include money for job training, early childhood education, programs that keep families together and programs that "provide stability and hope to millions of people who lack both," Sanders said.
"People are correctly concerned about crime," he said.
"(However,) the United States for the last 15 years has been "tough" on crime. We have more people in jail per capita (than other countries.) I am not convinced that approach works," he said.
Sanders said he liked the House bill's provisions on the following:
- The Violence Against Women Act which would provide up to $800 million in grants to states for programs dealing with violence against women.
- Nearly $4 billion in authorized money for state and local governments to hire an estimated 50,000 more police officers on the street.
- The Racial Justice Act which would allow appeals courts to consider statistical evidence of racial discrimination in death penalty cases.
- Nearly $10 billion for prison grants to ease overcrowding.
Has Sen. Joseph Biden heard of equal protection of the law?
Washington Times, The (DC)
May 1, 1994
https://infoweb.newsbank.com/
In the crime bills passed by both houses of Congress, there are provisions for the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA), which Sen. Joseph Biden, chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, has been pushing since 1990. The VAWA creates a National Commission on Violence Against Women and makes women a protected class by giving preferential treatment to female victims of crime.
In a speech in 1993 to the Wilmington, Del., Rotary Club, Mr. Biden said, "I have long believed that the single most important issue facing America is violence. . . . The facts bear out our fears - the United States is the most dangerous country in the world . . . there were 23,760 murders in 1992."
Who, exactly, were these murder victims?
From the total of 23,760, one can calculate that there were, on average, 65 murders each day. According to FBI statistics, 50 of those victims were men and 15 were women. Other government statistics from the Bureau of Justice Statistics over the past two decades indicate that, on average, each day, there are 16,000 victims of other violent crime: 10,000 men and 6,000 women.
In hearings on violence in 1990, Mr. Biden stated, "Victims are not to blame. . . . No one, male or female, just because they are able to impose greater physical force, is entitled to do anything to anyone else because of that predominance of force."
Mr. Biden has stated that the VAWA will "signal our clear and unambiguous disapproval of violence against women." Apparently Mr. Biden has not heard of our constitutional right to equal protection of the law and/or he approves of violence against men - the majority of victims of murder and violent crime.
All men and women who believe in equality to contact their senators and representatives and ask that the sexist VAWA be deleted from the crime bill.
JON R. RYAN
Chair
Committee on Gender Bias in the Courts
National Coalition of Free Men
Punta Gorda, Fla.
Crime bill: How Congress would protect you
House, Senate earmark billions
Republican, The (Springfield, MA)
May 4, 1994
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The House and Senate have approved their multi-billion-dollar versions of anti-crime packages designed to put more police on the streets, build more prisons, cure addicts, prevent teen-agers from becoming violent, and throw a lifeline to battered women and children.
Congress is hoping to appoint a House-Senate conference committee to reconcile differences in the two bills and vote on a final version before lawmakers go home for Memorial Day.
Even before the anti-crime bill becomes law, few lawmakers believe that it will significantly improve the quality of life in either urban or rural America.
But they believe it will make a good go of it.
The bill is supported by Western Massachusetts law enforcement officers, and by mayors who acknowledge that they won't be able to afford the extra crime fighting help and prevention programs once the federal dollars stop in five years.
"It is the usual game of dangling money to get the city to expand its services and then pulling back the money and saying you are on your own," said Springfield Mayor Robert Markel.
More police
Markel would like to expand the Springfield force from 390 to 430 officers. The city had 455 before the $4 million in federal revenue sharing money for police and fire was eliminated by the Reagan Administration in 1986.
"The crime bill will help," Markel said, adding "it's better than nothing. It will help us to do what we have to do here and we will worry about longer-range problems later on. Right now, I want to get community policing citywide and I have to have the police force to do it."
Holyoke Mayor William Hamilton said he won't hire one police officer with the federal money unless the city puts aside a reserve to pay for that officer's future unemployment and health benefits.
"I think the crime bill is a wonderful thing for America for those who can afford it," Hamilton said, adding that violence in Holyoke is not a citywide issue but more of an image problem.
"I want law and order. We are doing our best. But I am not going to be adding cops to give people a warm, comfortable feeling," Hamilton said.
U.S. Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., who was instrumental in enlarging the original Senate proposal by $12 billion, is hoping that the Senate's most comprehensive approach to fighting crime will at the very least begin to restore order on city streets.
"I believe that this crime bill will help declare an emergency," Kerry said. "This is not fooling around, we are deadly serious. Americans need to feel safe."
U.S. Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass., whose two brothers were killed by gunfire in the 1960s, supports the crime package which in many ways is a social policy reminiscent of the 1960s.
Programs target youth
Beyond the death penalities and prisons, Congress wants to spend billions of dollars to have teenagers play basketball at night in schools or baseball on summer teams with police officers as coaches. There would be youth education, employment and recreation programs, all to build self-esteem.
"The best way to deal with crime is prevention and early intervention," Kennedy said, adding that studies show drug dealers and violent adolescents became disengaged from society in the primary grades.
U.S. Rep. John Olver, D-Mass., said the crime bill helps set a course to stop teen-agers from continuing a violent pattern which he believes is caused by hopelessness and despair.
"There is a sense that nobody gives a damn," Olver said, adding that he links a general sense of hopelessness to the loss of thousands of jobs the state in the last decade.
Both bills focus on gang activity in terms of punishment and prevention.
"We focused on the 14- to 22- year-olds because they are the ones committing violent crimes," said U.S. Rep. Richard Neal, D-Springfield.
Neal agrees with having alternative programs for prevention and as well as building more prison space for juveniles.
"We have a tough crime bill. I think we are going to have to come to the dramatic conclusion that some people don't belong on the streets because they are beyond rehabilitation," Neal said.
The Senate bill earmarked $20 million to prosecute gang crimes and $500 million to build prison cells for violent juveniles. It would impose harsher penalties for using children in drug trafficking and sets aside $100 million to curb gang activities in public housing projects and develop after-school alternative programs. Another $50 million would create youth development centers to deal with juvenile violence.
Both bills would lower the age to try juveniles as adults for murder, attempted murder, drive-by shootings, robbery or assault with a firearm, to 13.
Funding for prisons
In many ways, the House bill is both a brick-and-mortar program and a social policy statement.
The House bill would spend $13 billion, nearly $7 billion more than the Senate version, building prisons.
The House has proposals to keep teen-agers off the street that the Senate didn't fund - $525 million for youth employment programs, $50 million for midnight sports programs, and $1.2 billion - twice the amount the Senate earmarked - for "ounce of prevention" programs for after-school and summer education, recreational and cultural programs.
Now the chambers have to hammer out language, programs and funding amounts.
The Senate approved its $22.3 billion bill last fall.
The House approved its $29 billion anti-crime package April 21, with $13 billion added to the original $16 billion package during the two weeks in April the House voted on a series of amendments.
While the Senate bill contains $8.9 billion for 100,000 more police officers, the House has only $4 million earmarked for 50,000 more. But House leaders said they agree to the Senate figure.
Hampden County District Attorney William Bennett and Sheriff Michael Ashe, who support the crime package, anticipate getting $4 million from it to fund an intensive effort to reroute non-violent drug users through a court-ordered, highly-supervised substance abuse program.
Both versions contain the "three strikes and you're out" clause or life without parole for the third conviction of a violent crime, and both earmark money for the Violence Against Women Act - the Senate contains $1.8 billion, double the House amount.
Political overtones
The bill has its political overtones.
For example, both versions create more than 60 offenses punishable by death. But Kerry said some of the offenses are laughable and that most will not affect 95 percent of the criminals convicted by state and county courts in Massachusetts.
The most serious difference is a ban on 19 assault weapons.
U.S. Sen. Joseph Biden, D-Del., chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said he won't accept a crime bill without the ban. House Judiciary chairman Jack Brooks, D-Texas, purposely split the omnibus House crime bill last year to circumvent a vote on assault weapons.
CRIME BILLS
Comparison of $22.9 billion Senate bill and $27.9 billion House bill
GUNS
Senate - Bans the manufacture, transfer or possession of 19 semiautomatic weapons; exempts 650 hunting weapons. Prohibits the transfer or possession of large capacity ammunition feeding devices.
House - No provision to ban semiautomatic weapons.
POLICE
Senate - Puts up $8.9 billion to hire 100,000 more cops.
House - Contains $3.5 billion for 50,000 cops. The House leadership said it will go up to 100,000 cops.
PRISONS
Senate - Provides $3 billion for construction of regional high-security prisons in states that adopt truth in sentencing rules saying that inmates serve 85 percent of their sentences; provides $3 billion for boot camps for non-violent offenders and $500 million to build jails for violent juveniles.
House - Authorizes $13.5 billion over five years for violent repeat offenders.
THREE STRIKES
Senate - Mandatory life sentences for those convicted of third violent felony; first two crimes could be violent federal or state felonies; third violent offense must be federal crime to be sentenced to life without parole. Third strike could be drug charge.
House - similar, but requires third strike to be federal crime, not drug offense.
DOMESTIC VIOLENCE
Senate - Provides $1.8 billion for Violence Against Women Act, including $800 million to aid police, prosecutors and victim advocates; $300 million for battered women's shelters; $200 million for rape education programs; $20 million for rape education on campuses, and $1.5 million for domestic violence hotline.
House - Provides $730 million to reduce violence against women, including $400 million in grants for state and local governments to help prosecute such crimes, and $235 million in grants for rape education and prevention. Makes crossing state line to stalk or batter a federal crime.
ANTI-GANG ENFORCEMENT
Bill imposes new penalties for crimes committed by gang members; provides $20 million for additional federal prosecutors for gang crimes; requires prosecution as adults of juveniles 13 years of age and older for murder, attempted murder, armed robbery, aggravated assault and drive-by shootings.
Senate - Prohibits sale or transfer of gun to juvenile or possession of a gun by juvenile; contains $100 million for state grants to be used for gang enforcement and prevention.
House - Would not be a crime to temporarily transfer or possess a handgun when handgun is used for farming, ranching or target shooting if youth has parent's written permission.
VIOLENCE AGAINST CHILDREN
Senate - Contains Oprah requirement to develop $40 million national criminal background check system for care providers for children, the elderly or disabled; authorizes $60 million for supervised child visitation centers for families with history of violence or abuse; requires death penalty for rapists who murder and for fatal sexual exploitation of child; requires child sex offenders to register addresses with stat; encourages states to establish registration, tracking and notification procedures for released sexually violent offenders.
House - Requires state officials to notify local agencies that offender is living in their community. States that fail to keep registrations of child sex offenders would lose 10 percent of federal law enforcement money.
PREVENTION PROGRAMS
Senate - Contains $2 billion for crime prevention programs: $320 million for schools, $250 million for anti-crime efforts in rural areas, $600 million for prevention programs, $100 million for youth violence prevention, $20 million for police partnerships, $50 million for youth development centers.
House - Gives $7 billion to prevent crime, including $2 billion in aid to poor, high crime areas, $1.3 billion for prevention programs targeting youths, such as grants for after-school programs and summer education, $525 million for summer youth programs, $50 million for midnight sports, $10 million for police partnerships with children, $20 million for community youth academies, $10 million in safety in housing projects, $300 million for safe schools and $200 million for youth violence prevention.
DEATH SENTENCES
Senate - Expands death penalty by 53 offenses, including drug kingpins when murder isn't involved; exempts women if pregnant and those mentally incompetent.
House - Similar; also allows defendants to use statistical evidence showing to demonstrate racial discrimination in imposing death penalty.
Under current law, there are only two federal offenses for which the death penalty can be imposed - airline hijacking that results in death and some drug-related murders. Both bills would increase that number substantially.
Tragedy may raise awareness of abuse
THE ARREST OF O. J. SIMPSON
Sun, The (Baltimore, MD)
June 19, 1994
https://infoweb.newsbank.com/
The tragedy surrounding O. J. Simpson's arrest on murder charges in the death of his estranged wife is expected to heighten community awareness about domestic violence and the need for the criminal justice system to deal sternly with spouse abusers, experts in the field said yesterday.
Although it has been five years since Mr. Simpson pleaded no contest in court to charges of beating his wife, Nicole, the couple's past troubles have been replayed in the national media, discussed by Los Angeles District Attorney Gil Garcetti and even referred to by the football Hall-of-Famer himself in a letter read publicly as he eluded police Friday.
``There are too many parts of our society that just don't take this seriously, still after all this time,'' said Betty Fisher, executive director of Haven Hills, a domestic violence program in the San Fernando Valley of Los Angeles. ``. . . This may be the thing that gets people to say this is really a problem.''
The stunning events of last week in which Mr. Simpson was a suspect, then charged with two murders and finally, a fugitive, riveted the nation's attention on an American hero and an American problem -- spousal abuse.
The attention now must be turned into action, said Jann Jackson, associate director of the House of Ruth in Baltimore, which provides shelter for abused women, legal counseling and counseling for abusers.
``We can turn this into a Tonya Harding, tortured media event, or we can use it as a wake-up call,'' said Ms. Jackson, who is also chairwoman of the Maryland Alliance Against Family Violence. ``We as a culture are still in the shock and disbelief stage. There's a lot of sympathy for O. J. . . . While we are watching our hero fall . . . the real tragedy is a woman has lost her life.''
For domestic violence counselors and professionals from California to Maryland, Mr. Simpson's denial that he beat his wife in January 1989, his feeling expressed in the public letter that he had at times felt like ``a battered husband,'' and his protestations of love were too familiar.
At the Haven Hills shelter in the San Fernando Valley, eight or nine women clients were watching television as Mr. Simpson's friend, Robert Kardashian, read a letter from the television sportscaster in which he talked about his relationship with his former wife.
``Somebody yelled out, 'You got to hear this,' '' recounted Mrs. Fisher, the executive director. ``The reaction was incredible, like, 'Where have we heard this before?' ''
What also was all too familiar to domestic violence experts and the women at Haven Hills was the punishment Mr. Simpson received after the 1989 incident.
Prosecutors asked for a month in jail because of the severity of the beating of Mrs. Simpson and an intensive yearlong therapy ** program for battering husbands.
Instead, a judge fined Mr. Simpson $200 and ordered him to make a $500 donation to a battered women's shelter and perform 120 hours of community service. Mr. Simpson also was permitted to receive counseling over the phone with a psychiatrist of his choice.
The police visit to the Simpsons' home in 1989 was the ninth time Mrs. Simpson had reported being abused by her husband.
The abuse apparently continued until even this year. The Boston Globe quoted police as saying that they frequently were called to Mrs. Simpson's Brentwood condominium in the past six months to intervene in disputes.
``I believe Joe Jones in Ottumwa, Iowa, gets very similar treatment because courts don't take it as a life-and-death issue,'' said Rita Smith, coordinator of the Denver-based National Coalition Against Domestic Violence. ``The punishment doesn't equal the violence that was displayed. So the message is it's not a big deal.''
In Baltimore, for example, city police received 60,000 911 calls related to domestic violence last year. Of those, there were 3,300 arrests, but only 200 men received jail time, she said.
Some 600 men were ordered to undergo counseling for abusers at the House of Ruth last year, Ms. Jackson said, but only 60 percent completed the counseling -- and there was little or no punishment by the courts for dropping out.
``What's tragic about [domestic violence] is the cycle plays out unless the community intervenes,'' said Kathryn Shulman, director of the Public Justice Center in Baltimore, which works on domestic violence, housing and civil rights. ``The intervention is critical and it can save lives. We know how to intervene as a society. But in order to intervene, all parts of the community have to be saying the same thing -- which is domestic violence is unacceptable.''
As part of President Clinton's crime bill, domestic violence against women has been established as a civil rights violation.
Supporters of the bill -- which includes the Violence Against Women Act -- hope to get final approval before Congress leaves for a July 4 recess.
The act includes provisions that would prevent people convicted of domestic abuse from obtaining firearms, provide millions of dollars to aid victims of abuse, and set up a national hot line for victims. A nationwide campaign of television and radio ads on domestic violence is set to begin this month, according to Ms. Jackson. The ads are meant to encourage people to stop considering domestic violence as dark family secrets, but rather crimes of violence like any others.
DOMESTIC VIOLENCE RECEIVING A FORUM
STALLED BILL WOULD AID WOMEN AND CHILDREN
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (PA)
July 1, 1994
https://infoweb.newsbank.com/
On the day of the O.J. Simpson hearing in California, lawmakers grappled with the issue of domestic violence, President Clinton issued a letter condemning it and a major ad campaign was launched encouraging people to intervene against it.
Lawmakers and government officials said yesterday the death of Nicole Brown Simpson had focused attention on the 4 million women who are battered by their husbands or boyfriends each year.
"The O.J. Simpson case has received so much attention because of Mr. Simpson's celebrity, but it is not a new story. In fact, the Simpson case is all the more remarkable because it is so terribly ordinary," Rep. Charles E. Schumer, D-N.Y., said at a hearing of the House Judiciary subcommittee on crime and criminal justice.
Schumer, the subcommittee chairman, urged lawmakers to support the Violence Against Women Act, which is part of the crime bill now hung up in a House- Senate conference. The legislation would provide money for training police in domestic violence and for helping battered women and their children.
The subcommittee heard testimony from five women who survived domestic violence, including a Maryland state legislator and the executive directors of violence prevention agencies in Chicago and New York state, and from law enforcement experts, community activists and academics.
Simpson, who is accused of murdering his ex-wife and Ronald Goldman, a friend of hers, had pleaded no contest in 1989 to misdemeanor spousal battery for beating her. Los Angeles police recently released tapes of Nicole Simpson's calls to a 911 dispatcher last Oct. 25, in which she pleaded for someone to keep her husband away.
At another forum, Donna Shalala, the secretary of health and human services, said domestic violence has become domestic terrorism.
"In past weeks, the news about domestic violence has finally raised this nation's conscience -- and challenged all of us to end an era of denial about the terrible toll of violence in many of our nation's homes," she said. ''About four women a day are murdered by their husbands or ex-husbands or boyfriends or ex-boyfriends."
Shalala was addressing a news conference by the Family Violence Prevention Fund, which announced a new ad campaign on television, radio and print designed to educate Americans about domestic violence and to encourage them to intervene to stop it.
The theme of the campaign is "there's no excuse for domestic violence."
Shalala read a letter from Clinton in which he wrote, "It's long past time to stop the violence. Domestic violence is not an isolated case in someone else's family. It is a crisis occurring all around us, in the homes of our neighbors, our relatives, our friends, and even in one's own home. We can no longer ignore the pleas of those in desperate need."
New domestic violence laws take effect
State makes it easier to keep abusers at bay
Denver Post, The (CO)
July 2, 1994
https://infoweb.newsbank.com/
Colorado's widely heralded new laws on domestic violence took effect yesterday, with more heraldry on the Capitol steps.
Also yesterday, a commission that will fund innovative programs for fighting teenage crime met for the first time.
"We're going to have safer homes in Colorado as of today," said U.S. Rep. Pat Schroeder, who used the occasion to call for congressional approval of the federal Violence Against Women Act.
"We have to bring other states up to the level Colorado has," said Schroeder, a Denver Democrat and chief sponsor of the federal legislation.
"It's what every state should have, not just Colorado," said "Jane," who left another state and hid her identity to escape her husband. "We need the federal (law) so our ... abusers cannot cross the state lines."
Mitzi Gallegos of Denver, a former abuse victim, said the new Colorado law "would have helped me a lot. ... It's better late than never, and thank God it's here."
State Rep. Peggy Kerns, D-Aurora, sponsor of HB 1253, a comprehensive law that makes it easier to keep abusers away from their victims, cited the "significant links between incidents of domestic violence and juvenile violence."
As the press conference was being held on the Capitol steps, the Youth Crime Prevention and Intervention Board, created last spring, had its inaugural meeting at the Aurora City Library.
The nine-member board will review applications for $3.6 million in grant money, making recommendations to Gov. Roy Romer for funding local programs designed to stop youthful crime.
Critics of the state's dedication to crime prevention have noted that the 1994 legislature committed 100 times that sum to build and operate prisons over the next five years. The domestic abuse bills involve no new money.
Kerns, however, said that's because state and local law officials are absorbing the costs of more arrests and
record-keeping. "I had a sheriff tell me, "We are going to do this because this is a significant crime,"' Kerns said.
Connie Platt of the Colorado Domestic Violence Coalition said that in Colorado so far this year, 13 women have been killed in household violence.
Only about a third of the states have strong domestic abuse laws, including just Colorado and Washington in the West.
"If California had had what we have, things would be a lot different on Court TV today," Platt said.
The arrest of O.J. Simpson and his record of abusing his former wife "has been a wake-up call for all of America," Schroeder said.
Rep. Diana DeGette, D-Denver, a co-sponsor, said the abuse bills "send a message just like we did with drunk driving 10 years ago: It's not OK."
The cornerstone, HB 1253, requires police to make an arrest when there's probable cause to suspect abuse. The alleged perpetrator has to be taken into custody; and can't be released at the scene.
The bill also provides for centralized record-keeping and tracking of suspects and makes it easier to get restraining orders.
"We can celebrate, but we really can't rest on our laurels," said Sen. Mike Feeley, D-Lakewood, a bill sponsor who said men have to be involved, too.
DeGette said the 1995 legislature will be asked to add property crimes to the definition of domestic violence and to require jail time for second and subsequent offenses.
SIMPSON CASE SPURS CALL TO TOUGHEN ABUSE LAWS
News & Record (Greensboro, NC)
July 5, 1994
https://infoweb.newsbank.com/
Victim advocates may push for lawmakers to increase penalties for domestic violence and to make protection orders more accessible.
The O.J. Simpson case has renewed discussion among North
Carolina's victim advocates on what changes should be made in state laws to better protect battered women.
While it is too late for state legislators to consider changes this session, advocates are looking toward the next session in January.
Allegations that former football great Simpson abused and finally killed his former wife "have put the spotlight on domestic violence in a way it hasn't happened before," said Kathy Hodges. She directs the N.C. Coalition Against Domestic Violence, 65 groups working to end abuse of women and children.
"If domestic violence is treated and investigated and pursued like a crime, and has consequences like a serious crime, I think we can do a lot to change community attitudes."
Among changes groups might propose, she said: making domestic violence protection orders more accessible; more money for domestic violence prevention programs; and stiffer sentences for abusers who often aren't sent to jail because the crime is a misdemeanor.
Advocates often say if the country's legal system treated spouse abuse more seriously, more victims would take court action and it would deter abusers.
Domestic violence "50-B" protection orders, designed to keep an abusive spouse away, are now limited to couples who have been married, or a man and woman who lived together as if married, Hodges said.
They don't cover people who have a child together but haven't lived together, an abusive former boyfriend or girlfriend, or a parent abused by an adult child.
Getting the $55 filing fee waived also is a barrier in some counties, Hodges said. She said she knows of one county that requires a detailed, verified income and expense statement. Guilford courts say they waive it in most cases because the woman doesn't have access to money.
The coalition also wants to increase penalties for domestic violence so that second and subsequent offenses become felonies, as the anti-stalking law provides. A misdemeanor charge of assault on a female carries a maximum prison sentence of two years, but rarely is that given, Hodges said. When it is, prison overcrowding can mean a release in two weeks, she said.
"With a felony there's the potential for more jail time and consequences with more teeth."
At the national level, advocates will push for passage of the $1.8 billion Violence Against Women Act, now in a joint House-Senate conference committee.
The act would triple federal financing of domestic violence programs, reopen a national hotline, increase penalties for crossing state lines to commit domestic violence, make a state's protection orders valid in other states, and provide more training for judges.
Although it doesn't plan to seek legislative action on the matter, the N.C. Coalition wants to see more police and sheriff's departments trained to better use the state's warrantless arrest law when they see evidence of violence, taking pressure off fearful victims to go to a magistrate and press charges on their own.
"It varies greatly in how it's used," Hodges said. "Some departments use it pretty well, others use it a little, some not at all or very rarely."
Its use varies slightly even among Guilford's law enforcement agencies.
High Point police have a new domestic violence policy that takes a pro-arrest stance - meaning that police will seek to arrest the suspect.
The Guilford Sheriff's Department policy states that a suspect will be arrested on the spot if there is evidence of assault, such as bruises or red marks around the neck, Lt. David Powell said.
If there's no evidence except a victim's statement, Powell said, the deputy takes a report and offers to help the victim get to a magistrate to file charges, and to safety.
In 1993, the Sheriff's Department answered 1,594 domestic disturbance calls. Of those, officers filed 240 reports of complaints of physical violence and made 52 on-site arrests.
But the Greensboro Police Department does not have what it considers a "pro-arrest" policy in domestic violence cases, Lt. Matt Lojko said. He said that some studies have questioned whether pro-arrest policies are effective in breaking the cycle of violence.
Greensboro officers consider what the victim says and what they see in deciding whether to arrest the suspect, Lojko said. Officers will arrest the suspect if the assault occurs in their presence.
"We look at each situation on its merits," Lojko said. "If a victim does not want to prosecute and if it's not a serious or life-threatening injury, and if it does not appear that violence will continue once the officer leaves, if the victim wants to pursue an arrest later she can go to the magistrate's office."
In 1993, Greensboro police answered 11,478 domestic disturbance calls, which includes those involving family members and others. Since 1989, domestic calls have increased 36 percent, said Carolyn Clark, who supervises the department's crime analysis section.
But Powell and Lojko say their officers still face many situations where the fearful victim does not want to prosecute, or later asks that the charges be dropped.
"They just want the violence to stop," Lojko said.
KEEP DOMESTIC VIOLENCE IN PERSPECTIVE
Daily News of Los Angeles (CA)
July 7, 1994
https://infoweb.newsbank.com/
What Love Canal did for toxic waste, what Anita Hill did for sexual harassment and what Magic Johnson did for AIDS, the O.J. Simpson saga is on the verge of doing for domestic violence. Contrary to conventional wisdom, this is not a good thing.
Special-interest advocates argue that what each of those high-profile cases of victimization did was "raise awareness" about sensitive issues. True enough. But any real gains that came from heightened public attention to those problems have been erased by a destructive tornado of expansive government intervention, irresponsible public policy, profligate spending and widespread miseducation.
Just look at Superfund - or at the absurd sexual-harassment codes at your nearest college campus that have attempted to ban leering or "inappropriate laughter." Or the misleading propaganda about the supposedly nondiscriminatory nature of AIDS that pervades the public school curriculum as fact.
And so it is now with the ugly issue of domestic violence. The worldwide publicity generated by O.J.'s abusive relationship with the woman he is now accused of murdering may lead to some much-needed improvements in the criminal-justice system - but at the same time, it unfortunately has breathed new life into some very bad legislation and misperceptions about domestic abuse.
For example, the Violence Against Women Act, which would make "gender- based" assaults a federal civil-rights violation, has picked up steam again. Supporters of the legislation refer to alarming statistics, like those from the 1985 National Family Violence Survey, showing that about 1.8 million women suffer at least one act of severe domestic violence.
On the other hand, the same survey shows that more 2 million men are assaulted by their wives or girlfriends each year. And according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, about one-third of women in prison nationwide for homicide have killed a spouse, ex-spouse or boyfriend.
The Violence Against Women Act, as the title of the act indicates, obviously doesn't do much for the little-publicized aspect of domestic violence against men. The idea that there are almost equal numbers of battered men and women out there just doesn't fit some feminists' anti-male, anti- patriarchal agenda. So they conveniently ignore it.
Here in California, a host of ideologically driven domestic violence mandates have been revitalized as well. One proposal would mandate sensitivity training for judges - without identifying the funds to pay for it. Another bill would enact strict gun-control measures against convicted spousal abusers. But that wouldn't do much good for victims whose batterers use their hands - and anything else they can get their hands on.
Fortunately, not all of the legislative action spawned by the O.J.-Nicole Simpson tragedy is as ill-designed. But it must be handled with good fiscal sense. During the July 4 holiday, for instance, the state Legislature passed a new budget that includes a $30 million windfall over the next two years for domestic-violence programs throughout the state. The bulk of the money will go to fund emergency shelters for battered women and their children, as well as transitional housing programs. The rest will go to counties and cities for domestic-violence prosecutions.
The need for more shelters is urgent and real. Betty Fisher, an official at the 30-bed Haven Hills facility here in the San Fernando Valley, notes that Los Angeles County's 16 shelters are chronically overcrowded. Throughout the state, two-thirds of battered women are turned away from shelters for lack of room.
But in allocating the new funds to build more shelters, the state must take care not to simply throw money at advocates and activists. The same kind of wasteful bureaucracy that eats up education dollars without improving the schools can wreak similar havoc in domestic-violence services without doing a whit for battered women - or men.
As for improving the prosecution side, it's not a simple matter of curing rampant sexism among male judges. Real solutions will be mundane and unsensational and won't fit any extreme ideological agenda. As Los Angeles Municipal Court Judge Kenneth Lee Chotiner has pointed out, for example, there is a serious lack of standards in the domestic-violence prevention programs to which the courts sentence domestic-violence offenders.
Chotiner notes that "Domestic violence cases are seen almost every day by practically every judge sitting in a criminal court" but that they are ''unable to do all that should be within our power to prevent reoccurrences of domestic violence by those persons whom we sentence." Lax administrators and bureaucrats who pose such obstacles come in all shapes, sizes and genders.
Moreover, there just aren't enough judges period to handle the state's criminal caseload. Thank the Democratic-controlled Legislature, which, out of political spite, refuses to give Republican Gov. Wilson more judicial slots to fill.
AGONY & ABUSE: FACT & FICTION
FALSE: SOME NEWS REPORTS SAY DOMESTIC VIOLENCE IS THE LEADING CAUSE OF INJURY TO WOMEN BETWEEN 15 AND 44.
NOT TRUE, SAYS AN EXPERT. AND BILLIONS OF DOLLARS MAY BE AT STAKE.
Plain Dealer, The (Cleveland, OH)
July 7, 1994
https://infoweb.newsbank.com/
You've probably seen the fact somewhere by now - that domestic violence is the leading cause of injury to women between the ages of 15 and 44.
Newsweek used it. The Washington Post used it. CNN and ABC used it.
And you may have heard that more women are injured by domestic violence than by auto wrecks, cancer and muggings combined.
But there's a problem with these facts: They aren't true.
Tracing the origin of these "facts" shows how quickly they can be twisted by journalists and politicians.
For example, look at that first fact.
People who say domestic violence is the leading cause of injury to women 15 to 44 years old cite an article co-authored by Linda Saltzman, a senior behavioral scientist at the Centers for Disease Control. But Saltzman said the article has been distorted.
"I spend my life trying to get it unattributed to us because we didn't say it and it's not accurate," Saltzman said.
In the wake of O.J. Simpson's arrest in the slaying of his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and Ronald Goldman, the media have been flooded with statistics on domestic abuse. One newspaper said a woman is beaten every five seconds, while another said wife abuse is more common than rape and auto accidents.
If only words were at stake, it would be one thing. But there is big money riding on these words. Congress now is debating whether to spend up to $2 billion on the Violence Against Women Act, and to the supporters of the bill, statistics can be ammunition.
No one disputes that violence against women is a problem. But how big a problem is another question.
Health and Human Services Secretary Donna Shalala, who has been pushing for more federal involvement in the issue, has taken to calling domestic violence an "epidemic."
But is it?
Only one national survey examines partner abuse among couples who live together in the United States.
And the most recent results, which will be released later this month at an international symposium in Germany, are startling: Between 1975 and 1992, reports of wife beating declined by 47%.
"Everyone is shooting numbers all over the place," said Michele Ingrassia, lead writer on Newsweek's July 4 cover story on domestic violence.
Take, for instance, the quote about women ages 15 to 44.
When asked to cite their source, most news organizations, including Newsweek, point to a letter by then-Surgeon General Antonia Novello that appeared in the June 17, 1992, issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.
Novello's letter, in turn, cites as its source a study done in western Philadelphia.
But the primary author of that Philadelphia study said her findings cannot be applied to the rest of the country.
To begin with, she said, the subjects of the study were almost entirely poor, inner-city black women, and separate research has shown that black women are far more likely to be abused than white women.
Second, Grisso said, her research did not find that domestic violence was a leading cause of injuries, but that all forms of violence - committed by intimates and strangers alike - were responsible for the high ranking.
In fact, she said, in 81% of the cases they examined, the women did not identify their attacker, making it impossible to determine whether the violence was domestic or non-domestic.
MEDIA, POLITICIANS TWISTED DOMESTIC VIOLENCE REPORTS
Times-Picayune, The (New Orleans, LA)
July 10, 1994
https://infoweb.newsbank.com/
WASHINGTON - You've probably seen the fact somewhere by now - that domestic violence is the leading cause of injury to women between the ages of 15 and 44.
Newsweek used it. The Washington Post used it. CNN and ABC used it.
And you may have heard that more women are injured by domestic violence than by auto wrecks, cancer and muggings combined.
But there's a problem with these facts: They aren't true.
Tracing the origin of these "facts" shows how quickly they can be twisted by journalists and politicians.
People who say domestic violence is the leading cause of injury to women 15 to 44 years old cite an article co-authored by Linda Saltzman, a senior behavioral scientist at the Centers for Disease Control. But Saltzman says the article has been distorted.
"I spend my life trying to get it unattributed to us because we didn't say it and it's not accurate," Saltzman said. "It's a very misleading quote, and I don't know how to stop it."
In the wake of O.J. Simpson's arrest in the slaying of his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and Ronald Goldman, the media have been flooded with statistics on domestic abuse. One newspaper reports that a woman is beaten every five seconds, while another says wife abuse is more common than rape and auto accidents.
If only words were at stake, it would be one thing. But there is big money riding on these words. Congress now is debating whether to spend up to $2 billion on the Violence Against Women Act, and to the supporters of the bill, statistics can be ammunition.
No one disputes that violence against women is a problem. But how big a problem is another question.
Health and Human Services Secretary Donna Shalala, who has been pushing for more federal involvement in the issue, has taken to calling domestic violence an "epidemic."
But is it?
There is only one national survey that examines partner abuse among couples who live together in the United States.
And the most recent results, which will be released later this month at an international symposium in Germany, are startling: between 1975 and 1992, reports of wife beating have actually declined by 47 percent.
When asked to square that decline with the assertion by Shalala and others that there is an epidemic of domestic violence, Professor Murray Straus, the lead researcher on the survey, had no explanation.
"People," he says, "pull their numbers from lots of places."
And nowhere is that more true than in the debate over domestic violence.
"Everyone is shooting numbers all over the place," said Michele Ingrassia, lead writer on Newsweek's July 4 cover story on domestic violence.
Take, for instance, the quote about women ages 15 to 44.
When asked to cite their source, most news organizations, including Newsweek, point to a letter by then-Surgeon General Antonia Novello that appeared in the June 17, 1992, issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.
Novello's letter, in turn, cites as its source a study done in western Philadelphia.
But the primary author of that Philadelphia study says her findings cannot be applied to the rest of the country.
"I would never generalize that to the total population of women in the United States," said Dr. Jeane Ann Grisso, a professor of medicine at the University of Pennsylvania.
To begin with, she said, the subjects of the study were almost entirely poor, inner-city black women, and separate research has shown that black women are far more likely to be abused than white women. In fact, population surveys suggest that battering is two to three times more common among black people as white, although researchers aren't sure why.
Secondly, Grisso said, her research did not find that domestic violence was a leading cause of injuries, but that all forms of violence - committed by intimates and strangers alike - was responsible for the high ranking.
In fact, she said, in 81 percent of the cases they examined, the women did not identify their attacker, making it impossible to determine whether the violence was domestic or non-domestic.
Ingrassia, the Newsweek writer, blames any confusion in the media on Novello's letter.
"She should have been a hell of a lot clearer about it," Ingrassia said. "If it's misleading, I think the fault is theirs, not ours."
A spokesman for CNN did not return a call to the company's offices; a writer for the Post said he was not sure where the information came from.
Nevertheless, the quotation attributed to Novello's letter has gone on to become a kind of Velcro fact, to which parts have been tacked on or ripped off as needed.
The best example of this is the widely circulated "fact" that not only is domestic violence the single most common source of injury to women, but that it is more common than:
"Heart attacks or cancer or strokes." (Rep. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y.)
"Auto accidents, muggings and cancer combined." (Dallas Morning News page 1 story)
"Auto accidents, rape and muggings combined." (Rep. Jim McDermott, D-Wash.)
The primary source for these comparisons is a second study, this one done in the late 1970s by the Connecticut-based husband and wife team of Evan Stark and Anne Flitcraft.
When pressed about the certainty of these comparisons, Stark hedges.
"We don't use the term 'single most common cause of injury,' " he said in an interview. "We use the term maybe."
As in maybe domestic violence is the leading cause of injury and maybe it isn't. Stark said he can't say for sure because there may be other injuries he's not aware of that are more common.
Stark and Flitcraft are among the leading national advocates for broader federal spending in the area of domestic abuse, and Stark says he made the comparisons because he knew they would draw attention.
"I threw in rape and muggings because they're dramatic events, but they're very rare," Stark said.
As for cancer, he added. "I don't know anything about cancer."
Cancer, apparently, got incorporated after Surgeon General Novello accidentally mentioned it in a speech, Saltzman said.
"I think she misspoke," said Saltzman. "It appeared sometime later in a speech she gave and I think she said 'cancer' and didn't realize that's what (she said). . . . I know we didn't give her that information."
Novello, according to a colleague who answered her phone, is out of town and cannot be reached for comment.
But the comment attributed to her is playing a key role in Congress, which is now considering passage of the Violence Against Women Act.
The act would do such things as create a nationwide toll-free hotline for abused women and require mandatory arrests of men suspected of beating their wives or girlfriends.
But two versions of the bill are now locked in conference and their supporters are trying desperately to free them.
Last week, one of those supporters, Rep. Charles Schumer, leaned into a microphone and reminded those in a packed hearing room of the "heavy price" our society pays for domestic violence.
"Indeed," said Schumer, "the United States surgeon general has warned that family violence - not heart attacks or cancer or strokes - poses the single largest threat of injury to adult women in this country."
But when he was told the origin of that information, the congressman's press secretary, Josh Isay, downplayed its significance.
"You don't need statistics to see and understand how terrible a problem this is. All you need to do is listen to the horrible stories of victims, of survivors of domestic violence."
`Big Brother' is present throughout crime bill
Press-Register (Mobile, AL)
July 13, 1994
https://infoweb.newsbank.com/
Have a care, criminals. Congress' crime bill contains severities such as these:
Regarding ``midnight sports leagues,'' which have done nicely without federal supervision, the government shall make grants to leagues in which ``not less than 50 percent of the players'' are ``residents of federally assisted low-income housing'' and which serve neighborhoods or communities whose populations have ``not less than two percent'' of various characteristics, such as ``a high incidence of persons infected with the human immunodeficiency virus.''
There shall be an ``interagency Task Force to be known as the Ounce of Prevention Council,'' chaired by the attorney general and including the secretaries of housing and urban development, health and human services, labor, agriculture and interior and the drug czar. It shall spend millions on this and that, including arts, crafts and dance programs.
There shall be ``partnerships'' between law enforcement agencies and groups providing ``child and family services.'' The partnerships' many functions shall include training police ``regarding behavior, psychology, family systems, and community culture and attitudes'' that are ``relevant to dealing with'' children who are or might become violent.
The attorney general shall make grants to organizations dealing with ``delinquent and at-risk youth'' through programs designed to do many things, including ``increase the self-esteem'' of such youth. Drug dealers may be led into new lines of work by grants funding ``mediation and other conflict resolution methods, treatment, counseling, educational and recreational programs that create alternatives to criminal activity.''
And so the crime bill goes, through hundreds of pages and billions of dollars more than $30 billion over six years. This bill is probably not the worst legislation Congress has ever cobbled together from trendy intellectual fads and traditional pork. But it is so bad that some sensible representatives and senators will vote against it for the right reasons, which include respect for federalism and for the public's intelligence.
Stephen Moore of the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, says that a year after a Republican filibuster stopped the president's $16 billion ``stimulus'' package, the crime bill is ``the largest urban cash program to come through Congress since Richard Nixon invented revenue sharing.'' But of course it is not just urban cash.
Legislators representing rural areas could not allow such a gravy train to roll through the countryside without strewing cash along the way. Hence there is ``Title XXV Rural Crime.'' And Washington accepts a new challenge: ``Subtitle B Drug Free Truck Stops and Safety Rest Areas.''
This crime bill is a bipartisan boondoggle because of the cachet that currently accrues to any legislation with an ``anti-crime'' label. But the bill sprays money most promiscuously at Democratic constituencies, the so-called (by themselves) ``caring professions'' social workers, psychologists and others who do the work of therapeutic government.
To help with the grandstanding about ``toughness,'' the bill creates scores of new federal death penalty crimes. But it also still contains (as this is written) the ``Racial Justice Act'' which is designed to end capital punishment. It would do so by allowing appeals based on statistical showings of racial disparities in capital punishment, appeals that would put immobilizing sand in the gears of the government's prosecutorial machinery.
The ``Violence Against Women Act'' genuflects at every altar in the feminist church. For example, it funds ``gender sensitivity'' training for judges. And the federal government is going to matriculate: It is off to college to conduct a ``campus sexual assault study,'' a monument to the feminist fiction that in a world infested with predatory males, women students risk life and limb just walking from dorms to libraries, not to mention the terrors of dating.
The current faith is that the sovereign remedy for what ails the nation is yet another crime bill that further federalizes what properly is a state and local responsibility keeping people safe. So it is no wonder that few politicians pause to wonder about the wisdom of piling federal punishments on acts already heavily punished by state laws.
This accelerating trend contributes to the collapse of self-government as communities slough off responsibilities, even for hiring police and building prisons, onto a distant federal government. And the suggestion that the federal government can produce safe streets accelerates the evaporation of the federal government's prestige because the results will mock the expectations so improvidently raised.
Supposedly ``ambitious'' bills like the crime bill actually are acts of legislative laziness, a slothful refusal to think and discriminate concerning federal responsibilities and competencies. The crowning irony is that the crime bill will increase contempt for law and lawmakers.
Crime bill recipe: Plenty of pork smothered in gravy
Tampa Bay Times (FL)
July 14, 1994
https://infoweb.newsbank.com/
Have a care, criminals. Congress' crime bill contains severities such as these:
Regarding ""midnight sports leagues,'' which have done nicely without federal supervision, the government shall make grants to leagues in which ""not less than 50 percent of the players'' are ""residents of federally assisted low-income housing'' and which serve neighborhoods or communities whose populations have ""not less than two percent'' of various characteristics, such as ""a high incidence of persons infected with the human immunodeficiency virus.''
There shall be an ""interagency Task Force to be known as the Ounce of Prevention Council,'' chaired by the attorney general and including the secretaries of housing and urban development, health and human services, labor, agriculture and interior and the drug czar. It shall spend millions on this and that, including arts, crafts and dance programs.
There shall be ""partnerships'' between law enforcement agencies and groups providing ""child and family services.'' The partnerships' many functions shall include training police ""regarding behavior, psychology, family systems, and community culture and attitudes'' that are ""relevant to dealing with'' children who are or might become violent.
The attorney general shall make grants to organizations dealing with ""delinquent and at-risk youth'' through programs designed to do many things, including ""increase the self-esteem'' of such youth. Drug dealers may be led into new lines of work by grants funding ""mediation and other conflict resolution methods, treatment, counseling, educational and recreational programs that create alternatives to criminal activity.''
And so the crime bill goes, through hundreds of pages and billions of dollars - more than $30-billion over six years. This bill is probably not the worst legislation Congress has ever cobbled together from trendy intellectual fads and traditional pork. But it is so bad that some sensible representatives and senators will vote against it for the right reasons, which include respect for federalism - and for the public's intelligence.
Stephen Moore of the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, says that a year after a Republican filibuster stopped the president's $16-billion ""stimulus'' package, the crime bill is ""the largest urban cash program to come through Congress since Richard Nixon invented revenue sharing.'' But of course it is not just urban cash.
Legislators representing rural areas could not allow such a gravy train to roll through the countryside without strewing cash along the way. Hence there is ""Title XXV - Rural Crime.'' And Washington accepts a new challenge: ""Subtitle B - Drug Free Truck Stops and Safety Rest Areas.''
This crime bill is a bipartisan boondoggle because of the cachet that currently accrues to any legislation with an ""anti-crime'' label. But the bill sprays money most promiscuously at Democratic constituencies, the so-called (by themselves) ""caring professions'' - social workers, psychologists and others who do the work of therapeutic government.
To help with the grandstanding about ""toughness,'' the bill creates scores of new federal death penalty crimes. But it also still contains (as this is written) the ""Racial Justice Act'' which is designed to end capital punishment. It would do so by allowing appeals based on statistical showings of racial disparities in capital punishment, appeals that would put immobilizing sand in the gears of the government's prosecutorial machinery.
The ""Violence Against Women Act'' genuflects at every altar in the feminist church. For example, it funds ""gender sensitivity'' training for judges. And the federal government is going to matriculate: It is off to college to conduct a ""campus sexual assault study,'' a monument to the feminist fiction that in a world infested with predatory males, women students risk life and limb just walking from dorms to libraries, not to mention the terrors of dating.
The current faith is that the sovereign remedy for what ails the nation is yet another crime bill that further federalizes what properly is a state and local responsibility - keeping people safe. So it is no wonder that few politicians pause to wonder about the wisdom of piling federal punishments on acts already heavily punished by state laws.
This accelerating trend contributes to the collapse o self-government as communities slough off responsibilities, even for hiring police and building prisons, onto a distant federal government. And the suggestion that the federal government can produce safe streets accelerates the evaporation of the federal government's prestige because the results will mock the expectations so improvidently raised.
Supposedly ""ambitious'' bills like the crime bill actually are acts of legislative laziness, a slothful refusal to think and discriminate concerning federal responsibilities and competencies. The crowning irony is that the crime bill will increase contempt for law - and lawmakers.
Biden: Votes short on Racial Justice Act
UPI (USA)
July 19, 1994
https://infoweb.newsbank.com/
Delaware Democrat Joseph Biden Jr. -- a key senator trying to shepherd President Clinton's anti-crime package through the Senate -- said Tuesday he does not have the votes to break a threatened Republican filibuster of the $30 billion package if it contains any form of the Racial Justice Act. The act, passed by the House, would allow death row inmates to use racial statistics to challenge their sentences.
Supporters of the proposal have contended that blacks are disproportionately represented on death rows. The Senate's proposed anti-crime package does not include a Racial Justice Act, and disagreement over the provision is holding up a compromise that could be passed by both chambers and sent to Clinton for his signature. A compromise worked out by the administration would confine the effect of the Racial Justice Act to federal death sentences -- about 40 or 50 cases a year -- but GOP senators so far have rejected it, Biden said. 'The Republicans have said they'll filibuster any (crime package) if it has any Racial Justice (Act) in it, period,' Biden said at a news conference. He said if he could not get enough votes to break a threatened filibuster, then the Racial Justice Act would probably have to go. 'Right now I do not have the votes to break a filibuster,' Biden said. Even if all 56 Democrats in the Senate sided with the administration, that is four votes short of the 60 needed to end a filibuster.
Attorney General Janet Reno, appearing with Biden and other Democrats on the Capitol lawn, said she was still hopeful for a compromise. 'I think that you can prevent discrimination without tying the hands of prosecutors,' Reno said. Critics of the Racial Justice Act, including some Democrats, have said its ultimate purpose is to end use of the death sentence. And they have said each murder case needs to be judged on its own in order to be constitutional. Reno and Biden appeared with other Democrats Tuesday mainly to promote the Violence Against Women Act in the crime package. The $1.8 billion program would allow federal civil rights suits for 'gender-based' attacks, create new penalties for sex crimes, triple federal funding for shelters for battered women and create a national domestic abuse hotline. The provision would also authorize $300 million for law enforcement efforts to combat violence against women, increase lighting and surveillance in places where women are most likely to be attacked, authorize $25 million to promote the arrest of abusive spouses and create training programs for state and federal judges to make them more sensitive to crimes against women. (Written by Michael Kirkland in Washington)
House-Senate Panel OKs Crime Bill
Chicago Sun-Times (IL)
July 28, 1994
https://infoweb.newsbank.com/
WASHINGTON - An anti-crime bill that includes a ban on 19 types of semiautomatic weapons was approved today by a joint congressional committee.
The legislation is a compromise between bills passed by the Senate last November and the House in April.
The final version now will be considered by each chamber.
Clinton said he expects the bill to reach his desk within days. "I assure you I will sign it into law without delay," he said.
The bill includes a provision for mandatory life sentences after three convictions for violent crimes. It also authorizes $8.8 billion to hire 100,000 local police officers, $8.3 billion to build more prisons and boot camps, $7.3 billion for crime prevention, including the violence against women act, and $6 billion for other programs.
"It will not stop crime but it will make a difference," said Sen. Dennis DeConcini (D-Ariz.).
Some Republicans said the bill was not tough enough and includes too many wasteful social programs.
"This is a wish list for frustrated socialists," said Rep. Henry Hyde (R-Ill.), citing provision for midnight basketball. The committee members dropped a racial justice amendment that was backed by the 40 black members of Congress and their supporters. It would have allowed appeals of death penalties if racial bias in sentencing could be proven.
$33 BILLION CRIME BILL SET FOR FINAL VOTE
IT WOULD BAN ASSAULT WEAPONS AND EXPAND THE DEATH PENALTY
IT ALSO WOULD TARGET SOCIAL PROGRAMS.
Philadelphia Inquirer, The (PA)
July 29, 1994
https://infoweb.newsbank.com/
Congressional negotiators completed work yesterday on an election-year blueprint to fight crime that would add 100,000 police officers across the country, build more prisons and impose harsher sentences on criminals.
The get-tough plan, which would spend nearly $33 billion over six years, also would ban many assault-style weapons and make about 60 federal crimes punishable by the death penalty.
And, in a bow to liberal pressure, the plan would spend billions of dollars for social programs, such as job training, and for urban recreation programs to help lure youths from crime.
The House and the Senate are expected to vote on the compromise crime bill as early as next week.
"This is truly an historic day," President Clinton said during a meeting with law enforcement officials. "We are on the verge of a major victory for our country."
He praised the package as "the toughest, largest and smartest federal attack on crime in the history of the United States of America."
Said Attorney General Janet Reno: "It will make our streets safer, our neighborhoods safer. . . . The American people understand what crime is doing to them, and we've got to respond."
The measure would authorize $10.7 billion for state and local law enforcement, $2.6 billion for federal law enforcement and courts, $10.5 billion for prisons, $7.4 billion for crime prevention and $1.3 billion for drug courts.
Unlike most authorization bills, this one addresses how most of it would be paid for. A trust fund created with money saved from cuts in the federal bureaucracy was expected to cover $30.2 billion of the costs, leaving $2.2 billion in prison funds, $400 million for a Police Corps scholarship program, $191 million for Border Patrol guards and $250 million for youth employment grants to be paid out of normal funds.
Last August President Clinton launched his campaign for an anti-crime package that included gun controls and billions to put more police officers on the street, saying "the first duty of any government" is keeping its citizens safe.
Lawmakers haggled over the bill for months, and indeed, there were obstacles down to the last hours of debate.
Only in recent days did negotiators agree to drop a bitterly controversial proposal called the Racial Justice Act. Pushed by the Congressional Black Caucus and included in the House crime bill, it would have allowed convicts to escape the death penalty if they could produce statistics showing racial bias in similar cases.
Backers insisted that it was necessary to correct a system skewed against minority prisoners. But opponents protested it put the burden on prosecutors to prove the absence of bias and would, in effect, make it impossible to carry out executions.
Senate Republicans promised to filibuster the final bill if it included the measure, and Clinton had signaled that he would not support it if the whole crime bill were in jeopardy.
Dropping the racial justice language might have averted a filibuster, but it also could cost the votes of some members of the Congressional Black Caucus.
Rep. Kweisi Mfume (D., Md.), chairman of the black caucus, was undecided about whether he would support the crime package, according to an aide.
Mfume said it was "regrettable" the racial justice measure was dropped but said he was pleased by other parts of the bill, notably the social programs to prevent crime, the ban on assault-style weapons, and tougher penalties for violence against women.
Spending for social programs ensured the support of at least one prominent member of the black caucus, Rep. John Conyers Jr. (D., Mich.). "For the very first time, draconian penalties share the stage equally with positive prevention programs," Conyers said.
Although the final plan is weighted toward traditional law-and-order remedies - spending more than $3 on police and prisons for every $1 spent on preventive social programs - Republicans lambasted spending money on prevention programs as being soft on crime.
"This is a wish list for frustrated socialists," complained Rep. Henry J. Hyde (R., Ill.).
Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (R., Utah) called it "a big-spending boondoggle that isn't going to do what we want it to do."
But Clinton and other backers dismissed such criticisms.
"The prevention money is in this bill," Clinton said, "because the law enforcement officials of the United States said we cannot jail our way out of this crisis. We've got to give our kids something to say yes to and a future."
Rep. Jack Brooks (D., Texas), the tough-talking chairman of the Judiciary Committee, agreed that there was a need for some federal help to show tough youths an alternative to gangs and crime.
He praised the final bill, saying: "It's going to put violent criminals in the clink, where they belong." But he added that the bill had "a lot of innovative operations in it that give us a chance to save people so we don't have to put them in jail."
Brooks was at the center of one potentially deal-killing proposal earlier in the week: the ban on 19 assault-style weapons and ammunition magazines that can allow a person to fire 40 or even 50 times before having to reload.
Brooks, an avid hunter who represents a Texas district where hunting is popular, feared that the ban would take guns out of the hands of law-abiding citizens.
Rep. Charles E. Schumer (D., N.Y.), who crusaded for the ban, countered that "these assault weapons . . . were made for one purpose, to kill as many people as possible."
Though he failed to block the assault-gun ban, Brooks won a concession sought by the National Rifle Association: The crime bill will exempt pawnbrokers from having to do background checks of people buying back their own guns. The background checks were required by the Brady gun-control law.
CRIME BILL PROVISIONS
Local police: Includes grants for local governments to hire 100,000 officers for community policing.
Federal law enforcement: Authorizes more Border Patrol guards and other federal police agents.
Assault weapons: Bans 19 types of assault-style firearms and dozens of others that are deemed by the government to meet the characteristics of such firearms. Gun clips would be limited to 10 bullets.
Death penalty: Increases from two to about 60 the number of federal crimes punishable by death, including fatal carjackings and drive-by shootings. Establishes procedures to resume federally administered executions.
Prisons: Provides $10.5 billion for prisons, including $8.7 billion in a state prison building grant program and $1.8 billion to reimburse states that incarcerate criminal illegal aliens.
Prevention: Provides $7.4 billion for crime-prevention programs. Includes money for the Violence Against Women Act and for Local Partnership Act grants.
Repeat offenders: Sends third-time violent and drug felons to prison for life, if the third conviction is in federal court.
Prison overcrowding: Permits early release from federal prisons for first- time nonviolent drug offenders serving mandatory minimum sentences. Would permit release of inmates over 70 after 30 years if deemed on longer dangerous.
Drug courts: Provides $1.3 billion for special courts to provide treatment and close monitoring of first-time or nonviolent drug offenders.
Juvenile crime: Permits federal prosecutions of 13- and 14-year-olds as adults for some violent crimes. Bans sale of handguns to juveniles.
ABUSED STATISTICS
Like hydra heads or spreading kudzu, the false statistics keep proliferating
National Review
Author/Byline: CATHY YOUNG
August 1, 1994
https://infoweb.newsbank.com/
IT DID not take long for advocacy groups and some commentators to claim that the O. J. Simpson case could do for domestic violence what Anita Hill did for sexual harassment. If the Anita Hill analogy refers to gender politics eclipsing truth, common sense, and journalistic skepticism, then that is exactly what's happening.
We are barraged with horrendous figures. CNN's Sheryl Potts said at the end of a 3.5-minute segment on wife-abuse, ''While you were watching this, 13 women were severely beaten by someone who claims to love them'' (i.e., one every 15 seconds). According to the Associated Press, ''4 million to 6 million women are beaten [each year]. That means once every 5 seconds ... a woman is punched or kicked ... or held down and pummeled.'' On Crossfire, Miami radio talk-show host Pat Stevens upped the count to 60 million by reasoning that ''there are 6 million reported cases,'' and ''the FBI estimates'' that only 1 in 10 is reported. This went unchallenged.
One AP report ran somewhat counter to the general tone, noting that murders of women by male partners had dropped 18 per cent since the late 1970s; but it went on to temper this unduly optimistic message with the assertion that non-fatal violence was up: ''From 1980 to 1990, federal figures show, reports of domestic assault ... rose from 2 million to 4 million, according to Rita Smith, coordinator for the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence.''
Where do the numbers come from? One source for the 4-to-6-million figure is a 1993 Commonwealth Fund study, which included such acts as shoving, slapping, and throwing things in its definition of battering. The statistic of a woman beaten every 15 seconds is derived from the 1985 National Family Violence Survey by University of New Hampshire researchers Murray Straus and Richard Gelles, which estimated that about 1.8 million American women each year suffer at least one incident of ''severeviolence'' by a partner - a punch, a kick, an assault with an object. But only 7 per cent of the victims required medical care. A study published in Archives of Internal Medicine in 1992 found that, based on reports by wives in marital therapy, 48 per ce nt of ''severe marital aggression'' by husbands caused no injury, and 31 per cent caused only a ''superficial bruise.'' While these are still reprehensible acts, most people visualize something very different when they think of ''severe violence.''
And the reports of domestic assault rising from 2 to 4 million a year over a decade? The figure, said Rita Smith, came from the Justice Department's Bureau of Justice Statistics. Were these assaults reported to police? ''Either that, or to medical personnel,'' said Miss Smith. ''I'm not exactly sure how they gathered it, but it was one of the statistics they put out in some publication.'' What publication? She didn't recall.
An information specialist at the BJS knew nothing of such figures. Most of the Bureau's publications are based on the National Crime Victimization Survey, which puts the number of female victims of assaults by partners at about 470,000 a year.
Another shocking claim was made in a MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour segment by Connie McCall of Rainbow Services, a battered-women's assistance group in Los Angeles: ''Over 50 per cent of women admitted to emergency rooms are admitted for an injury caused by a partner.'' In a pre - O. J. Simpson speech last March, Health and Human Services Secretary Donna Shalala gave a more modest estimate: ''In our hospital emergency rooms, some 20 to 30 per cent of women arrive because of physical abuse by theirpartner.''
These numbers (whose implausibility ought to be evident to anyone who has ever been to a hospital) come in part from studies in which medical charts were reviewed and most unexplained or inadequately explained injuries to women were reclassified as related to abuse, and in part from a 1984 study based on questionnaires distributed to emergency-room patients in a Detroit hospital. About 25 per cent of the female patients answered ''yes'' to the statement, ''At some time my boyfriend/husband orgirlfriend/wife has pushed me around, hit me, kicked me, or hurt me''; so did about 20 per cent of the men. Most of the abuse did not seem to be directly related to the emergency-room visit. Moreover, a high percentage of the subjects were poor, unemploy ed, and cohabiting without marriage - factors strongly associated with the risk of domestic violence.
The same fallacy of projecting data obtained by studying the urban poor to the population at large is responsible for another widely reported figure - cited, for instance, in Newsweek's July 4 cover story on battered women: ''[I]n 1992 the U.S. Surgeon General ranked abuse by husbands and partners as the leading cause of injuries to women aged 15 to 44.'' In fact, in a 1992 column in the Journal of the American Medical Association on the medical response to domestic abuse, then-Surgeon GeneralAntonia Novello mentioned that ''One study found violence to be ... the leading cause of injuries to women ages 15 through 44.'' This refers to all violence, not just violence by male partners. The article in which the finding was reported, titled ''A Population-Based Study of Injuries in Inner City Women,'' examines emergency-room visits by women ''in a poor, urban, black community in western Philadelphia.''
And how many women are killed by their current or former mates? CNN has cited the figure of 4,000 a year - even though the FBI statistic is 1,300 to 1,400. The higher number comes from activist groups and includes, Miss Smith told me, ''a lot of suspicious deaths that aren't [officially] classified as a homicide.'' The higher the better: on This Week with David Brinkley, Lynne Gold-Bikin, incoming chairman of the American Bar Association's family-law section, claimed that ''some 25 per cent ofwomen who are abused ultimately get killed by their husbands.'' If, as Newsweek says, ''I woman in 4 will be physically assaulted in her lifetime,'' this would put a woman's risk of being murdered by a partner at 1 in 16. In fact, it's closer to 1 in 1,000.
A widely cited statistic - which appeared in Sheryl Potts's CNN report - is that ''women who leave their batterers are at a 75 per cent greater risk of being killed by the batterer than those who stay.'' This information was attributed to the NCADV; a brochure issued by the organization cites ''Barbara Hart, 1988,'' as the source. When I asked Miss Smith about this, she said a bit hesitantly, ''Barbara Hart is an attorney with the Pennsylvania Coalition Against Domestic Violence - and I haverecently talked to her and she said, 'I didn't say that.' So, the figure - whether or not it's 75 per cent, I don't know. [But] most of the women who are murdered are either separated or in the process of leaving when they die.'' She assumed that all the se women had been battered in the marriage. However, a number of experts such as criminologist Lawrence Sherman, president of the Crime Control Institute and author of Policing Domestic Violence (1992), dispute the ''escalation'' theory. Sherman's studyin Milwaukee over nearly two years revealed that in 33 domestic murders, 32 couples had no prior police record of battery - and there was 1 homicide among the roughly 6,500 couples with such records.
Epidemic Proportions?
IS THERE an epidemic of domestic violence in America? One could say that we have an epidemic of violence in general, and for all the talk about doctors and executives who beat their wives, domestic violence tends to affect primarily the same segments of society as street crime. Men and, to a lesser extent, women guilty of violence in the home are also much more likely than other people to commit violent acts outside the family. Yet the view that domestic violence is largely the doing of aminority of thugs and sociopaths is anathema to the highly politicized battered-women's advocacy movement. An NCADV pamphlet makes this clear: ''A feminist-based analysis of battering [shifts] from a focus on the 'pathology' of individuals or families to the particular social policies, norms, and practices which tolerate woman-abuse.''
The theme of supposed tolerance for woman-battering in our culture is reflected in the infamous tale of the ''rule of thumb,'' repeated by Cokie Roberts on This Week with David Brinkley: ''The rule of thumb, the expression we use ... that was the size of the stick that was acceptable to beat your wife with under common law.'' Yet, as the scholar Christina Hoff Sommers shows in Who Stole Feminism? this origin of the phrase ''rule of thumb'' is a myth. While two American courts in the nineteenthcentury alluded to such an ''ancient law'' they never invoked it as a standard. The first legal code enacted by the Massachusetts colonists in 1652 prohibited wife-beating.
Despite attempts to find the roots of wife-battering in the power of physical chastisement once given to husbands by law, few serious researchers believe that domestic violence is primarily a way to maintain patriarchal control. Even feminist scholar Elizabeth Schneider of Brooklyn Law School concedes, in a 1992 New York University Law Review article, that the ''traditional model'' of battering as a means of maintaining male dominance ''is thrown into question when the violent partner is a woman, or the victim is a man.'' Though Professor Schneider is referring to same-sex couples, a wealth of research (notably the Straus-Gelles studies) has found that wives and girlfriends are the aggressors at least half the time, though they are five to s ix times less likely to cause physical damage. (On one MacNeil/Lehrer report, an L.A. police officer said that he had been on many calls where the woman was the assailant; but the panel discussion following the segment focused solely on male batterers and female victims.)
For every two women killed by a male partner, there is at least one man killed by a wife or girlfriend - not including cases dismissed as self-defense. It is interesting to recall that in 1989, when San Diego housewife Betty Broderick fatally shot her ex-husband and his new wife after harassing them for months, the incident was not seen as emblematic of the epidemic of domestic violence by women. Indeed, Mrs. Broderick got a great deal of sympathy as a wronged wife (she claimed that DanBroderick's alimony payments of only $16,000 a month amounted to a white-collar version of battery), and her first trial ended with a hung jury. Male violence toward women fits into the fashionable larger theme of oppression; female violence toward men d oes not.the Violence Against Women Act - which, among other things, would redefine wife-beating as a gender-based hate crime and mandate sensitivity training for judges. (In Massachusetts, a similar media frenzy has already led to a situation in which, former Massachusetts Bar Association President Elaine Epstein wrote last year, ''it has become essentially impossible to effectively represent a man against whom any allegation of domestic violence has been made.'')
Beyond these immediate political goals, the advocates' real agenda is to promote their view that American women are routinely terrorized by men who are intent on keeping them subjugated. Why not just say that 5 out of 4 women are battered by men, and be done with it? Given their track records, the media would probably buy that one, too.
AGE-OLD DILEMMA: IS IT OK TO LIE FOR A GOOD CAUSE?
Press of Atlantic City, The (NJ)
August 4, 1994
https://infoweb.newsbank.com/
Why are statistics on spousal abuse being abused?
Obviously some of the data-abusers do so with the best of intentions. They are simply trying to get people to sit up and pay attention to the plight of battered women - a truly important goal. But to do so, they've created a false epidemic.
If advocates had confined themselves to the truth, domestic violence might have continued to be regarded as a serious, yet curable, problem. But if 19 or 50 or even 100 percent of women are "brutalized," a much more sweeping conclusion is suggested: that all men are dangerous, and that all women need to be protected.
This raises age-old ethical dilemmas. Is it OK to lie if your cause is a noble one? After all, distortions about the extent of domestic violence have had some positive effects, opening the public's eyes as well as their wallets.
Battered women are now a hot story, and Congress is about to pass the $1.8 billion Violence Against Women Act, which among other things will fund toll-free hotlines, battered-women's shelters and education and training programs. It's certainly possible that none of this would be happening if advocacy groups stuck strictly to the facts.
Yet even supposedly harmless "puffing" can have negative consequences. Having fought so hard to be taken seriously and treated as equals, women are again finding themselves portrayed as weak and helpless - the stereotypes that have been traditionally used to justify discriminating against them.
As author Katherine Dunn writes, "The denial of female aggression is a destructive myth. It robs an entire gender of a significant spectrum of power, leaving women less than equal with men and effectively keeping them 'in their place' and under control."
But perhaps the worst consequence of the inflation of domestic violence statistics is that a type of ratchet effect develops: The same people who complain that no one listens if they don't exaggerate only find it more difficult to get people's attention the next time around, thus "justifying" yet another inflation.
Eventually, the public either stops listening altogether or finds the statistics too absurd to believe. And when we're trying to alleviate the tragedy of domestic violence, the last thing you want anyone to do is laugh.
WHY ARE DATA ON ABUSE BY SPOUSES SO EXAGGERATED?
Columbian, The (Vancouver, WA)
August 7, 1994
https://infoweb.newsbank.com/
Why are data on abuse by spouses so exaggerated? Obviously some of the data-abusers do so with the best of intentions. They are simply trying to get people to sit up and pay attention to the plight of battered women a truly important goal. But to do so, they've created a false epidemic.
If advocates had confined themselves to the truth, domestic violence might have continued to be regarded as a serious, yet curable, problem. But if 19 or 50 or even 100 percent of women are "brutalized," a much more sweeping conclusion is suggested: that all men are dangerous, and that all women need to be protected.
This raises age-old ethical dilemmas. Is it OK to lie if your cause is a noble one? After all, distortions about the extent of domestic violence have had some positive effects, opening the public's eyes as well as their wallets.
Battered women are now a hot story, and Congress is about to pass the $ 1.8 billion Violence Against Women Act, which among other things will fund toll-free hotlines, battered-women's shelters and education and training programs. It's certainly possible that none of this would be happening if advocacy groups stuck strictly to the facts.
Yet even supposedly harmless "puffing" can have negative consequences. Having fought so hard to be taken seriously and treated as equals, women are again finding themselves portrayed as weak and helpless the stereotypes that have been traditionally used to justify discriminating against them.
As author Katherine Dunn writes, "The denial of female aggression is a destructive myth. It robs an entire gender of a significant spectrum of power, leaving women less than equal with men and effectively keeping them in their place' and under control."
But perhaps the worst consequence of the inflation of domestic violence statistics is that a type of ratchet effect develops: The same people who complain that no one listens if they don't exaggerate only find it more difficult to get people's attention the next time around, thus "justifying" yet another inflation.
Eventually, the public either stops listening altogether or finds the statistics too absurd to believe. And when we're trying to alleviate the tragedy of domestic violence, the last thing you want anyone to do is laugh. Armin A. Brott
Hyping statistics about domestic violence risks turning off the public
Denver Post, The (CO)
Author/Byline: Armin A. Brott
August 7, 1994
https://infoweb.newsbank.com/
By now, everyone knows about Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman, whose brutal murders have kept millions of Americans close to their television sets. But there's a third victim of these killings: the truth about the prevalence of domestic violence and female victimization - a truth maimed almost beyond recognition by the irresponsible use of statistics.
Consider the wildly varying number of women who are supposedly beaten by men each year. The National Coalition Against Domestic Violence, for example, estimates that more than half of married women (over 27 million) will experience violence during their marriage, and that more than one-third (over 18 million) are battered repeatedly every year. Both statistics are widely quoted in the media.
But when I asked Rita Smith, coordinator of the NCADV, where these figures came from, she conceded that they were only "estimates." From where? "Based on what we hear out there." Out where? In battered-women's shelters and from other advocacy groups.
Common sense suggests that asking women at a shelter whether they've been hit would be like asking patrons at McDonald's whether they ever eat fast food. Obviously such answers cannot be extrapolated to the country as a whole.
Donna Shalala, secretary of health and human services, offers a lower but still eye-popping estimate. Four million women are battered each year by their male partners - "just about as common as giving birth," she said in a speech last March. But where did Shalala get this figure? From a 1993 Harris poll commissioned by the Commonwealth Fund, in which 2 percent of the 2,500 women interviewed said they had been "kicked, bit, hit with a fist or some other object."
Based on about 55 million women married or living with a man, that's a total of 1.1 million. So where did the other 2.9 million come from? They were women who said they had been "pushed, grabbed, shoved or slapped" - not pleasant or condonable, certainly, but also not what most people would call the "terrorism in the home" Shalala referred to in her speech.
Shalala - and media reporting the story - also neglected to tell us that fewer than 1 percent of those polled claimed ever to have been beaten up, much less choked or threatened by their partners with a knife or gun.
Shalala's statistics, however, pale in comparison to those issued by various women's-advocacy groups. By far the worst distortion of the number of battered women comes from Pat Stevens, a radio talk-show host who was interviewed on CNN's "Crossfire" last month.
Stevens estimated that, when adjusted for underreporting, the true number of battered women is 60 million. No one bothered to tell "Crossfire" viewers that 60 million is more than 100 percent of all the women in America who are currently in relationships with a man.
Instead, Stevens's "estimate" and the other "facts" on the number of battered women serve to fuel the claims that there's an "epidemic of domestic violence" and a "war against women."
So how many battered women are there? Murray Straus and Richard Gelles, who have been tracking spousal abuse for more than 20 years, have come up with what are widely believed to be the most accurate estimates available - National Family Violence Survey.
The survey, sponsored by the National Institute of Mental Health, found that there is no violence in about 84 percent of American families. In the 16 percent of families that do experience violence, the vast majority of that violence takes the form of slapping, shoving and grabbing.
This is not to minimize the violence that occurs - or the seriousness of some violence against spouses. But the fact is that only 3 to 4 percent of all families (about 1.8 million) have members who engage in "severe" violence - kicking, punching or using a weapon. And a recent study published in the Archives of Internal Medicine found that 44 percent of "severe violence" to wives did not cause any injury, and 31 percent caused only slight bruises.
Still, Straus and Gelles estimate that about 188,000 women are injured severely enough to require medical attention. That's a horrifying number, but it's a far cry from the many millions of damaged victims implied by the least cautious users of the statistics.
Another commonly accepted "truth" about domestic violence is that 95 percent of the time women are the victims - and men the perpetrators. But the National Family Violence Survey - and a variety of other studies - have found that men are just as likely to be the victims of domestic violence as women.
Straus and Gelles found that among couples reporting violence, the man struck the first blow in 27 percent of the cases; the woman in 24 percent. The rest of the time, the violence was mutual, with both partners brawling. The results were the same even when the most severe episodes of violence were analyzed. They were also the same when only the woman's version of the events was considered. Even more interesting are Straus's findings, released in early July, that men's violence against women - even as reported by women - has dropped 43 percent between 1985 and 1992. Over the same period, in contrast, assaults by women against men actually increased.
So where did the 95 percent figure come from? From the U.S. Department of Justice, which collects data on the number of reports of domestic violence.
But as women's-rights groups rightfully claim, reports are not always an accurate measure of the severity of the problem. Certainly, some female victims of domestic violence fail to call the police, fearing retaliation by their abusers. But other Justice Department studies have shown that men - who are socialized to "take it like a man" - report violent victimization much less frequently than women.
"They wouldn't dream of reporting the kind of minor abuse - such as slapping or kicking - that women routinely report," says Suzanne Steinmetz, director of the Family Research Institute at Indiana University/Purdue.
Distorted statistics notwithstanding, there are clearly women who have been severely battered, and many of them are afraid to leave their batterers - either because they are economically dependent, or because they fear further abuse. And in another one of its highly publicized statistics, the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence tells us that women who leave their batterers "increase by 75 percent their chances of getting killed."
When I asked Rita Smith to explain, she conceded that the coalition has no concrete evidence of the effect that leaving a violent partner will have on a woman. I asked Smith whether it bothered her that her organization was responsible for spreading an imaginary statistic.
"Not really," she said. "We think the chance of getting killed goes up, and we're just trying to make a point here."
In a small number of tragic cases, abusive men do kill their partners - the FBI estimates that about 1,400 women (about 6 percent of all murders) were killed by their spouses or partners in 1992, though not all of the murders were the result of escalating domestic abuse. But the impression one gets is that women are the only ones killed in domestic disputes.
Again, this impression is contradicted by the facts. A Justice Department study released in July showed that 41 percent of spousal-murder victims were male.
Why are statistics on spousal abuse being abused? Obviously some of the data-abusers do so with the best of intentions.
Battered women are now a hot story, and Congress is about to pass the $1.8 billion Violence Against Women Act, which among other things will fund toll-free hotlines, battered-women's shelters and education and training programs. It's certainly possible that none of this would be happening if advocacy groups stuck strictly to the facts.
Yet even supposedly harmless "puffing" can have negative consequences. Having fought so hard to be taken seriously and treated as equals, women are again finding themselves portrayed as weak and helpless - the stereotypes that have been traditionally used to justify discriminating against them.
As author Katherine Dunn writes, "The denial of female aggression is a destructive myth. It robs an entire gender of a significant spectrum of power, leaving women less than equal with men and effectively keeping them "in their place' and under control."
But perhaps the worst consequence of the inflation of domestic violence statistics is that a type of ratchet effect develops: The same people who complain that no one listens if they don't exaggerate only find it more difficult to get people's attention the next time around, thus "justifying" yet another inflation.
Eventually, the public either stops listening altogether or finds the statistics too absurd to believe. And when we're trying to alleviate the tragedy of domestic violence, the last thing you want anyone to do is laugh.
Armin Brott is a free-lance writer in Berkeley, Calif.
SPOUSE ABUSE STATISTICS ARE TAKING A BEATING
Palm Beach Post, The (FL)
OPINION
Author: Armin A. Brott
August 7, 1994
https://infoweb.newsbank.com/
Why are statistics on spousal abuse being abused?
Obviously, some of the data-abusers do so with the best of intentions. They are simply trying to get people to pay attention to the plight of battered women - a truly important goal. But they've created a false epidemic.
If advocates had confined themselves to the truth, domestic violence might have continued to be regarded as a serious, yet curable, problem. But if 19 or 50 or even 100 percent of women are ``brutalized,'' a much more sweeping conclusion is suggested: that all men are dangerous and all women need to be protected.
This raises age-old ethical dilemmas. Is it OK to lie if your cause is a noble one? After all, distortions about the extent of domestic violence have had some positive effects, opening the public's eyes as well as their wallets.
Battered women are now a hot story, and Congress is about to pass the $1.8 billion Violence Against Women Act, which among other things will fund toll-free hot lines, battered-women's shelters and education and training programs. It's certainly possible that none of this would be happening if advocacy groups stuck strictly to the facts.
Yet even supposedly harmless ``puffing'' can have negative consequences. Having fought so hard to be taken seriously and treated as equals, women are again finding themselves portrayed as weak and helpless - the stereotypes that have been traditionally used to justify discriminating against them.
As author Katherine Dunn writes, ``The denial of female aggression is a destructive myth. It robs an entire gender of a significant spectrum of power, leaving women less than equal with men and effectively keeping them `in their place' and under control.''
But perhaps the worst consequence of the inflation of domestic violence statistics is that a type of ratchet effect develops: The same people who complain that no one listens if they don't exaggerate only find it more difficult to get people's attention the next time around, thus ``justifying'' yet another inflation.
Eventually, the public either stops listening altogether or finds the statistics too absurd to believe. And when we're trying to alleviate the tragedy of domestic violence, the last thing you want anyone to do is laugh.
House rejects debate on crime package
Defeat leaves Clinton bitter
Dallas Morning News, The (TX)
August 12, 1994
https://infoweb.newsbank.com/
WASHINGTON - The House on Thursday rejected the $33.2 billion crime control bill backed by President Clinton because of objections to its social spending, death penalty omissions and assault weapons ban.
By a vote of 225-210, House members defeated a procedural rule that would have allowed debate on the bill. Fifty-eight Democrats broke party ranks and voted against the rule. Eleven Republicans voted for it.
Ten Texas Democrats voted for the rule. Eleven other Democrats joined with all nine Texas Republican members in voting against it.
The vote leaves the bill's backers with the option of drafting revised debate rules or sending the measure back to a House-Senate conference committee for altering. Some backers sounded pessimistic.
Rep. Jack Brooks, D-Beaumont, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, said of his Republican opponents, "They're going to have to go home and say, `We killed the crime bill.' "
The House's action, coming two weeks after the bill emerged from conference and seemed headed for passage, was a bitter setback for President Clinton, who lobbied hard for the measure's adoption.
It was Mr. Clinton's biggest legislative loss since his economic stimulus package died in the Senate last year. The lack of support comes at a time when Congress is debating yet another contentious issue, health care reform.
Appearing in the White House briefing after the House vote, an angry Mr. Clinton denounced the vote as a "political trick" orchestrated by the House Republican leadership and the National Rifle Association. He urged legislators to continue to work for passage of the bill.
"To let special interests use parliamentary maneuvering to undermine what is clearly the will of the American people and the will of the majority of the Congress is a bad mistake, and I don't think the people will forget about it," Mr. Clinton said.
Tanya Metaska, chief lobbyist for the NRA, praised the vote, contending the House was in harmony with the country's desire to have tougher law enforcement, not higher social spending.
"This is not a setback but a step ahead for real safety and genuine security," Mrs. Metaska said in a statement. "(The) NRA will continue to fight in earnest for meaningful criminal justice reform."
The bill contained many of Mr. Clinton's major anti-crime proposals, including funding for 100,000 new police officers, life-without-parole for three-time felons and expanded prison space and "boot camps."
Opposition to the bill stemmed from an unusual coalition of black lawmakers, anti-gun control Democrats and almost all Republicans.
Some members of the Congressional Black Caucus objected to the conference committee's deletion of a provision to allow death row inmates to challenge their convictions because of alleged racial bias.
Ten Democratic members of the Black Caucus, including Rep. Craig Washington, D-Houston, and its only Republican, Rep. Gary Franks of Connecticut, voted against the rule.
The only other Texas member of the Black Caucus, Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson, D-Dallas, supported the rule.
Four members of the Hispanic Caucus from Texas - Republican Rep. Henry Bonilla of San Antonio and Democratic Reps. Frank Tejeda of San Antonio, Kika de la Garza of Mission and Solomon Ortiz of Corpus Christi - opposed the rule.
A group of conservative Democrats - including several Texans - opposed the bill's ban on 19 types of military-style assault weapons as an unwarranted infringement on the legal rights of private gun owners.
The seven conservative Texas Democrats voting against the rule were Pete Geren of Fort Worth, Jim Chapman of Sulphur Springs, Greg Laughlin of West Columbia, Charles Stenholm of Stamford, Ralph Hall of Rockwall, Bill Sarpalius of Amarillo, Charles Wilson of Lufkin.
Republican objections focused on $7.4 billion for crime prevention programs. Many Republicans contended that the spending diverted money from prison construction and amounted to wasteful "pork" for urban Democrats.
During debate on the rule, several Republicans pointed to a $10 million authorization for a criminal justice research center at Lamar University in Beaumont, Mr. Brooks' alma mater.
They also derided other provisions in the bill to fund sensitivity-training programs, arts and crafts and dance classes and midnight basketball leagues to reduce violent street crime.
"This is not a crime bill," said Rep. Gerald Solomon, R-N.Y. "This is a welfare bill with a few good things in there to cover it."
There was also no shortage of partisan shots taken during the sometimes raucous two hours of debate on the bill.
Rep. Dick Armey, R-Lewisville, accused Democrats of subjugating society's safety to protect Mr. Clinton's political image.
"Your president is not that important to us," he said, drawing jeers from Democrats in the chamber. "We will cast our votes here as a matter of conscience. We will not cast our vote out of fear."
Democrats fired back that it was the Republicans who were succumbing to intimidation by their party leaders and special interest groups in an attempt to kill the crime bill without a direct vote.
"Let us not be a helpless giant in response to the demands and the concerns of our people," said House Speaker Tom Foley of Washington. "The society that cannot protect the physical security of their citizens is a pretty useless society, whatever else it can accomplish."
After the vote, Mr. Foley and other members of the House Democratic leadership huddled behind closed doors with White House aides to discuss future action on the bill and health care reform, which has been stalled.
Sen. Joseph Biden, the bill's chief sponsor in the upper chamber, called on the House to draft a new debate rule. He said he would not agree to a new conference committee.
"If that rule is defeated, they should do it again," Mr. Biden, D-Del. said in a statement. "We cannot let a small group of zealots deny the American people what they want and what they need."
Mr. Biden, the Senate Judiciary Committee chairman, is among those who have worked for almost four years to pass a crime control bill. The last bill died because of a Republican filibuster in 1991.
One provision of the current bill is the Violence Against Women Act, which provides $1.8 billion in funding for programs to aid battered women and makes abuse a federal civil rights offense.
The bill also included $10.5 billion for expanded prison capacity and alternative forms of incarceration. Of that total, $1.8 million was earmarked for states such as Texas with large numbers of criminal undocumented immigrants.
Another $13.2 billion was allocated for state and local law enforcement, including $8.8 billion to hire 100,000 new police officers. Texas was slated to receive funding for an estimated 10,000 officers.
The firearms provision also included bans on ammunition magazines holding more than 10 rounds, stronger licensing of gun dealers, and a prohibition against possession and sale of handguns to juveniles.
Mike Beard, head of the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence, called the vote to prevent debate "anti-democratic" and urged the House to continue to push the bill with the weapons provisions intact.
"To do otherwise is to let the force of obstructionism and gridlock win," Mr. Beard said in a statement.
BIDEN SPEAKS OUT PASSIONATELY ABOUT FATE OF ANTI-CRIME BILL
USA TODAY (Arlington, VA)
August 12, 1994
https://infoweb.newsbank.com/
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Joseph R. Biden Jr. stood by quietly this week as the president and House members scrambled to scrape together enough votes to pass a $30.2 billion anti-crime bill molded mostly by him.
On Thursday, they failed.
On Friday, Biden spoke.
"I've never been as frustrated in 22 years as a senator," the Delaware Democrat said. "I passionately believe this can make a difference in the lives of ordinary people. For the life of me I cannot understand (the need) to satisfy the manufacturers of 19 types of guns; why in God's name we deny this bill from passing."
For nearly an hour, he railed against Republicans, the National Rifle Association and conservative Democrats who won't admit they dislike the crime bill because of its proposed ban on 19 types of semi-automatic assault weapons.
He admitted the president isn't strong enough on Capitol Hill to pin down the NRA and overrun the Republican party. And Biden chastised the press, which has plotted every move in the crime bill's death dance.
"You love to talk about who's winning, who's losing, not who's right, who's wrong and their motivation," Biden charged. Does any of that really matter? he asked.
It does for Clinton, who has promised a comprehensive crime-fighting measure since his campaign. Many lawmakers agree that if he can't get a crime bill through Congress, health care can't possibly survive.
The crime bill isn't as important politically to Biden, who isn't up for re-election until 1996, when the bill will be a memory whether it passes or not.
He didn't need the crime bill in 1990. It failed that year, and he won with 63 percent of the vote.
Passing the package with money for police, prisons and prevention grants is more of a personal thing for him. So is $1.8 billion for his Violence Against Women Act, which he has fought for for several years.
The GOP is on the top of his hit list.
"I believe there is a fundamental decision made by the Republican party that no matter what, if the president is given credit for the crime bill passing this year, that is not good for Republicans," he said. "Whatever legitimate political device, they will deny that from happening."
For years, Republicans latched onto the death row appeals reform to kill the bill, he charged.
"Now they want to suggest that in the dead of night, behind closed doors, the conference committee loaded up the crime bill with 10 pounds of pork," he said. "What is this pork my Republican friends are all talking about?"
Rep. Michael N. Castle, R-Del., can point out a piece of bacon or two. The crime bill would be easy to cut, he said. "I could do it in an hour."
He said he would start with $10 million that is earmarked for a criminal justice program at the Lamar University in Beaumont, Texas, the hometown of House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jack Brooks. "That so reflects the problems with Congress," he said. "I don't care why it's there. It shouldn't be there."
Castle joined 224 other House members in voting down a procedural rule Thursday that shelved the crime bill. He warned Biden that morning how he was planning to vote.
Castle is a thorny problem for Biden, who acknowledged the frustration of having Delaware's lone House member vote against a bill he wrote.
But he refused to lambaste Castle in his attacks on the GOP.
Castle, he said, is off limits. "I'm not going to criticize Mike Castle," he said. "My state's too small. So much is at stake that we've got to stick together."
Besides, he said, "I understand Mike's problem. He's a new guy. I assume he wants to be a team player. It's a tough spot."
But Biden's in a tough spot himself.
He acknowledged that if the House can't turn around at least eight House members in the next week, "we're in deep, deep trouble. (The GOP) will have prevailed, gridlock will have worked, they will have embarrassed the president."
But Biden vows he will not return to the bargaining table with Republicans.
"I would rather have this thing win or lose on principle here, and everybody would know who killed the dog."
POLITICAL RIGHT SULLIES THE DEBATE WITH ITS WILD MISREPRESENTATIONS DOMESTIC VIOLENCE
Buffalo News, The (NY)
Author/Byline: LINDA HIRSHMAN - Los Angeles Times
August 14, 1994
https://infoweb.newsbank.com/
The weeks since O.J. Simpson's arrest for murder have witnessed an explosion of debate about domestic violence. With a conference committee of Congress considering the Violence Against Women Act as part of the crime package, the subject commands unprecedented attention. Sadly, much of the debate has been sullied by the willingness of the political right to engage in wild misrepresentations.
Some of the people engaged in this process also bring their credibility as teachers and scholars to the exchange. To find academics presenting skewed information to the public casts doubt on the whole enterprise of scholarship, a doubt that will last long after the current debate is over.
For instance, Simpson defense lawyer Alan Dershowitz, a Harvard Law School professor, describes a recent Justice Department study of murder in families as concluding that "women kill almost as often as men do." The numbers in the study are: Women commit 41 percent of familial murders; men, 59 percent. There is no counting system in which 41 percent is "almost as" great as 59 percent. And these aren't the national statistics. The 1992 FBI numbers for murders of spouses show 70 percent are men killing their wives and 30 percent are women killing husbands.
Why the huge disparity between the real numbers and the Dershowitz numbers? The Justice Department study Dershowitz used looked only at the largest counties in the United States, which are substantially nonwhite, and African-American wives kill their husbands at a higher percentage than white wives do (although the ratio is still not 50-50). And his figures count the deaths of children as well as spouses.
So, nationally, Dershowitz's almost half of family murders committed by women turns out to be less than one-third if you look at spousal murders alone. It didn't take a Harvard professor to figure this out. It came from the same report and the same human source at Justice that Dershowitz used. Defense lawyers don't usually get cross-examined about their statements, but if this is the way Dershowitz prepares his witnesses, Simpson had better stick with attorney Robert L. Shapiro for the courtroom work.
This misrepresentation of the numbers is just the most recent variation of the Big Lie technique much in vogue among the debunkers of gender violence. Christina Hoff Sommers, an associate professor at Clark University in Massachusetts, published a book, "Who Stole Feminism?" claiming that the common-law doctrine of the "rule of thumb," which allowed a man to beat his wife if he used moderation, as in a stick no thicker than a thumb, is a "feminist fiction." Conservative columnists John Leo and Mona Charen glommed onto this assertion and crowed about how newspapers and TV stations had been taken in.
There's only one problem: It's Sommers who is wrong. There are at least three 19th century American cases referring explicitly to the "rule of thumb" that allows a man to beat his wife if he used moderate means (State vs. Olivor, State vs. Rhodes and Bradley vs. State). Sommers knew about the cases because she refers to the two that convicted the husband anyway. But she never mentions the case that let the husband off.
Sommers also didn't do her homework. The cases and the articles about the rule of thumb refer to the universally accepted authority on old English common law, William Blackstone. Sommers looked at Blackstone's Commentaries, she says, in which Blackstone found that the common law prohibited violence against wives. She even cites a volume in her footnotes. A real scholar would ask how all those 19th century U.S. state court judges who refer to Blackstone could have been so mistaken.
The answer is that Sommers must have been looking at some sort of condensed version of Blackstone that left off the Latin parts, perhaps for the benefit of the common modern reader. Her quotation stopped right in the middle of a sentence. In the real volumes of Blackstone, available in many libraries, a husband's right in the old common law to moderate chastisement of his wife is there in black and white. Violence is allowed, Blackstone says, if it "lawfully and reasonably belongs to the husband for the due government and correction of his wife." (Book 1, Chapter 15, pages 444-445) Blackstone even talks about the limits on the permission in civil law to use scourges (whips or straps) and sticks. Perhaps Charen and Leo also lack libraries.with a curtain of lies.
LINDA HIRSHMAN is a professor of law and director of the Women's Legal Studies Institute, Chicago Kent College of Law.
GUN BAN OPPONENTS SLOW DOWN CRIME BILL
St. Louis Post-Dispatch (MO)
August 21, 1994
https://infoweb.newsbank.com/
House negotiators concluded marathon discussions Saturday night on a compromise anti-crime bill but failed to bring the measure to a vote because of deep divisions over an assault weapons ban.
Democratic leaders were prepared to convene the House again on Sunday in hope of approving a scaled-down $30 billion measure.
"People are tired, frustrated, and I think it's probably better for everyone to have a night's sleep," said Rep. Vic Fazio, D-Calif., one of the negotiators.
Fazio said the other issues had been settled, including across-the-board cuts in the legislation's crime prevention programs.
Rep. Bill Richardson, D-N.M., the Democrats' deputy whip, said late Saturday he was three votes short of getting the new package to the House floor. A defeat would be a repeat of the procedural move that shelved the original $33 billion anti-crime package Aug. 11.
Fazio said the National Rifle Association was waging an aggressive campaign against the provision to ban 19 types of assault-style weapons.
Added to that, out of nowhere came an alternative crime bill offered Saturday by Rep. Bill Brewster, D-Okla., and Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Calif., both gun-ban opponents, that was fast gaining supporters. It would eliminate the gun ban, all crime prevention programs and death penalties while pouring money into prisons, police and the border patrol. Of the more than 140 co-sponsors late Saturday night, about one-third were Democrats, a Brewster aide said.
The original crime bill was rejected in a 225-210 vote after Republicans and conservative Democrats revolted over the ban on assault weapons and over spending on crime prevention programs.
Congressional aides said that about $3 billion in spending had been cut from the bill, much of the cuts intended for crime prevention programs.
One source said the negotiators had tentatively decided to spend: $13.5 billion on law enforcement, including hiring police; $9.9 billion on prison construction; and $6.9 billion on crime prevention programs.
Republicans had focused on $40 million authorized for midnight basketball leagues as an example of waste.
But the biggest loser was likely to be a youth employment and training program that would have received $900 million.
During negotiations Saturday afternoon, Democrats agreed to a GOP provision allowing evidence of prior sexual attacks to be admitted in trials of accused rapists.
But Democrats insisted that the effective date be delayed to allow a review by the Judicial Conference, made up of the nation's federal judges, one source said.
On another key issue, Democrats agreed to limit the retroactive effect of new rules exempting some nonviolent, first-time drug offenders from mandatory 5- and 10-year federal sentences. Some Republicans said that could free as many as 16,000 prisoners, although the Justice Department predicted that only a few thousand, at most, would qualify.
The White House brought what pressure it could to bear on legislators, and President Bill Clinton pressed for passage of the bill during his radio address to the nation Saturday.
"The crime bill offers this pledge," the president said: "From now on, our government will do everything we can to make sure that people who commit crimes get caught, that those who are guilty are convicted, that those who are convicted serve their times, that those who can be saved from a life of crime are found when they're young and given a chance to do better."
But it was clear that Republicans were not willing to allow the crime bill through without major changes.
"Our first goal is clear - remove billions of dollars in wasteful social spending from the crime bill," said Rep. Bill Paxon, R-N.Y., in the Republicans' response to Clinton's radio address Saturday. "Then, let's use some of that savings for new prisons, more community police, additional FBI, drug enforcement and border patrol personnel, and to fully fund the Violence against Women Act."
Some provisions of the bill clearly were unaffected by the last-minute negotiations. Enactment of a federal death penalty for 60 offenses had support from negotiators on both sides. For some in the Congressional Black Caucus, that meant they would vote no.
"My opposition to it is based strictly on the death penalty, and they are not considering eliminating it," said Rep. William L. Clay, D-Mo. Clay is adamantly opposed to the death penalty, but he said he would be unenthusiastic about the crime bill, even if it did not allow for federal executions.
"I don't think it's much of a bill," he said. "There is nothing in the bill that will really address violent crime in the country today."
Backers of the bill say it would help pay for 100,000 new police officers. Critics say the actual number is 20,000 or less.
The bill would permit life terms for three-time violent offenders, allow prosecutors to try 13-year-olds for some violent crimes and make crossing state lines to injure a spouse a federal crime.
Even if the bill does get through the House, it still would have to clear one final hurdle in the Senate, where some conservative Republicans threatened in advance to stall action unless the bulk of spending cuts approved by House negotiators came from prevention areas.
HOUSE PASSES CRIME BILL
BIPARTISAN EFFORTS GIVE CLINTON VICTORY
Daily Press (Newport News, VA)
August 22, 1994
https://infoweb.newsbank.com/
With the vital support of Republicans, House Democrats on Sunday achieved what they could not do on their own, passing a $30.2 billion anti-crime package and sending it to the Senate. The vote gave President Clinton the most tortuous legislative victory of his administration.
The vote on final passage of the bill was 235-195, with 46 Republicans joining 188 Democrats and one Independent to vote yes. Still, 64 Democrats voted against their party, and 131 Republicans voted no.
In the euphoria of the moment, many predicted that the bipartisan effort would usher in a new era of cooperation between the parties. But this could be sorely tested as the Senate considers the crime package next week and as both houses grapple with health care legislation that is already much diminished from what the president had promised.
Indeed, after the vote, Rep. Christopher Shays, R-Conn., who had labored hard on the bipartisan package, was asked if this process could serve as a model for health care. ``Don't get carried away,'' he replied.
Clinton hailed the House action as ``a great victory for all law-abiding Americans'' on Sunday night and appealed for more bipartisan support for worthy legislation.
Clinton also urged the Senate to quickly pass the bill, which he called ``the toughest and smartest crime bill in the history of the United States.''
But in the Senate, conservative Republicans have vowed to stall action because of crime-prevention spending that they have criticized as ``pork.''
Sunday's bill trimmed the original package from $33.5 billion, with nearly two-thirds of the cuts from prevention programs that Republicans had branded as useless welfare spending. The bill would keep the provision for 100,000 new police officers, expands the death penalty to cover more than 50 federal crimes and bans the sale and possession of 19 assault weapons.
A measure to scrap the bipartisan compromise and approve a plan with no money for prevention programs - and no ban on assault weapons - failed, 232-197. Thirty Republicans joined with 201 Democrats and one Independent to beat back that effort.
Many members said they knew the bill was not perfect but it was better than the bill they blocked Aug. 11 in a stunning setback for the president.
Rep. William Hughes, D-N.Y., conceded that ``some of the provisions are absolutely awful.'' But, he said, ``It's time to stop fiddling and pass a crime bill.''
Rep. John Dingell, D-Mich., a member of the National Rifle Association for the past 20 years, said he found the ban on assault weapons ``obnoxious, offensive and contrary to the rights of all Americans'' under the Second Amendment.
``This is, however, on balance, and narrowly so, a smart and a tough bill,'' said Dingell, who added that he was quitting the rifle association.
Rep. Susan Molinari, R-N.Y., who overcame significant Democratic opposition to shoehorn into the bill a provision that allows mere allegations of past sexual offenses to be admissible in court, even if no charges were filed, hailed the bill as a ``better product'' than the earlier one.
Afterward, she said the vote was the most impressive display of bipartisan cooperation since the passage last year of the North American Free Trade Agreement. But she did not necessarily see this as the harbinger of a bipartisan honeymoon.
``It only happens when the Democrats need us,'' she said, adding, ``It may send the Democratic Party a signal that they can save themselves a lot of heartache and embarrassment if they do it this way.''
PROVISIONS OF THE CRIME BILL
The bill would authorize:
* Spending $13.45 billion for state, local and federal police, including $8.8 billion for a matching program to help hire 100,000 new law enforcement officers to carry out community policing.
* Tossing third-time violent and drug felons in prison for life if the third conviction is in federal court, allowing the release of some over 70 after they served 30 years.
* Spending $9.85 billion for prisons, including $7.9 billion for state prison grants and $1.8 billion to reimburse states for incarcerating criminal illegal aliens.
* Banning 19 named types of assault-style firearms and scores of others deemed by the government to meet assault-style characteristics, effective the day the bill is signed. It would limit magazine capacity to 10 rounds. It would exempt 650 named firearms and all guns and magazines legally owned when the law took effect. Since magazines have no serial numbers, the government would have to prove that a magazine was made or purchased after the bill was enacted.
* Spending $6.9 billion for crime prevention programs, including $1 billion for drug courts. The prevention money includes $1.6 billion for the Violence Against Women Act, including money for shelters, and $1.6 billion for flexible Local Partnership Act grants.
* Allowing some non-violent, first-time drug offenders to avoid mandatory minimum 5-and 10-year federal penalties. This would be limited to those who use no gun or threat of violence, are not organizers and never served more than 90 days in jail for another crime.
* Creating more than 50 new federal death penalty crimes. Many carried that penalty before the Supreme Court overturned capital punishment in 1972. But some would have been new, including carjacking slayings, drive-by shooting murders and major drug-traffickers, even those not directly connected to any specific death.
HOW THEY VOTED
The Virginia delegation from Hampton Roads - Herbert Bateman, R-Newport News; Robert C. Scott, D-Newport News; Owen Pickett, D-Virginia Beach; and Norman Sisisky, D-Petersburg - voted against the bill.
HOW REVISED BILL COMPARES WITH PREDECESSOR
Star-Ledger, The (Newark, NJ)
August 22, 1994
https://infoweb.newsbank.com/
MONEY IS PARED AND REALLOCATED
Here is how the $30.2 billion crime bill passed by the House yesterday compares with the $33.2 billion crime measure defeated by the House on a procedural vote Aug. 11.
POLICE HIRING
Original - Authorized $10.7 billion for state and local law enforcement, including $8.8 billion to hire 100,000 new police officers over six years.
Compromise - Same.
CRIME PREVENTION
Original - Authorized $7.4 billion in grants to set up after-school programs for children, midnight sports leagues, job training and other measures. Includes $1.8 billion for the Violence Against Women Act, a measure featuring grants to reduce domestic violence and other gender-related crimes and to train law enforcement officials in dealing with violence against women. Compromise - Cuts $2 billion from prevention measures, with an across-the- board 10 percent reduction in all the measures and more severe cuts in others. It combines some individual grants into a $379.7 million block designed to give localities more authority in determining how the money would be spent.
DEATH PENALTY
Original - Extended the death penalty to more than 50 newly created or existing federal offenses, such as treason, drive-by shootings, or murder of a federal law enforcement official.
Compromise - Same.
ASSAULT WEAPONS
Original - Banned manufacture of 19 named military-style assault weapons and "copycat" models and ammunition magazines with more than 10 rounds. Prohibits sale of firearms to anyone subject to a family violence restraining order.
Compromise - Same.
PRISONS
Original - Authorized $8.3 billion for construction of prisons and boot camps. Of that money, 60 percent would go to states that demonstrate improvement in making violent criminals serve long sentences. The remaining 40 percent would be set aside for states that adopt truth-in-sentencing laws, which can mandate that a certain percentage of a sentence must be served.
Compromise - Authorizes $9.8 billion for prison construction and boot camps. Of those funds, 50 percent would go to states that have already passed truth-in-sentencing laws, while the remaining half would be used on a discretionary basis. Most of those funds would be distributed to the states according to a government formula.
TRUST FUND
Original - Most of the bill would be financed by a $30 billion trust fund comprised of money saved by the White House "reinventing government" initiative, which is designed to reduce bureaucracy. About $3 billion would come from tax revenue.
Compromise - The legislation's programs would be paid for solely by the trust fund.
SEXUAL OFFENDERS
Original - The names of sexual predators - people who commit sex crimes against children or adults - must be registered with law enforcement agencies for 10 years, subject to annual verification.
Compromise - Sexual predators must be registered for 10 years, subject to annual verification. Some sexual predators involved in more violent acts must be registered permanently and would be subject to quarterly notification. The rule also provides for notifying communities that a sexual predator lives in or is moving to the area.
MANDATORY SENTENCES
Original - The legislation exempted retroactively some nonviolent, first- time drug offenders from federal mandatory minimum sentences of five and 10 years.
Compromise - Limits the retroactivity of the exemptions.
ADDED PROVISIONS
The compromise legislation includes some measures not in the original bill, including new rules of evidence such as allowing admission of prior sex offenses as evidence at trial, effective after a five-month review by a panel of federal judges. If the judges approve the change, it would become effective 30 days afterwards. If they do not approve, it would become effective in five months unless Congress acts to block it.
CONGRESS APPROVES ANTI-CRIME BILL
61-38 SENATE VOTE ENDS THE BATTLE
Philadelphia Inquirer, The (PA)
August 26, 1994
https://infoweb.newsbank.com/
After two weeks of back-and-forth scrimmaging in Congress, the Senate yesterday broke loose and passed the largest anti-crime bill in history, sending it to President Clinton for his signature.
The late-night vote was 61-38. Seven Republicans joined 54 Democrats to produce the victory margin, while two Democrats and 38 Republicans voted against it. All six Philadelphia-area senators voted for passage.
Clinton is expected to quickly sign the $30.2 billion bill into law, possibly as early as this morning. Its passage was an important if flawed political win for the President and for Democrats facing tough challenges in fall elections.
"The long, hard wait is finally over," Clinton said after the vote. "The American people are going to get the action against crime they have been demanding for over six years."
The President praised what he called a bipartisan spirit among Democrats and Republicans that "overcame the . . . divisions and false choices" that blocked final action on major crime bills in the past.
Yesterday's final tally was no measure of the extraordinary difficulty the bill's sponsors confronted in pushing it through Congress.
Apart from a dogged effort by the Republican leadership in both houses to
deny Clinton a political victory on the bill, its supporters faced a fierce lobbying drive by the National Rifle Association to kill it because of its ban on military-style assault weapons.
Even after supporters won a key procedural vote on the bill earlier yesterday, paving the way for its final passage, a small cadre of NRA-backed senators mounted one last desperate bid to scuttle the bill.
Led by Sens. Larry E. Craig (R., Idaho), and Ted Stevens (R., Alaska), the NRA-inspired group mounted a mini-filibuster that held up final action for hours but finally fizzled for lack of broad support.
The most crucial vote on the bill occurred when six Republicans abandoned their party and joined 55 Democrats to overcome a GOP effort to sidetrack the measure on a procedural motion. Democrats needed at least 60 votes to defeat the Republican ploy.
After that, the steam went out of the opposition party's drive to kill the crime bill.
Minutes before that vote, Senate Republican leader Bob Dole of Kansas conceded defeat. "I regret I failed as a leader to keep our people together on this side of the aisle," a disheartened Dole said.
Majority Leader George J. Mitchell (D., Maine), after a wearying two days of keeping his own notoriously fractious members together while negotiating with the maverick Republicans, was jubilant at the outcome.
"This has been literally a six-year struggle," Mitchell said. "But the victory is not for one political party or for one president. It's for the American people. It'll provide some needed security for millions of Americans who live in fear of violent crime."
As in the House on Sunday when 42 Republicans joined majority Democrats to pass the bill, the compromise crime measure was saved in the Senate by GOP defections.
Republican senators voting in the procedural motion to keep the crime bill on track were Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, William V. Roth Jr. of Delaware, John H. Chafee of Rhode Island, John C. Danforth of Missouri, James M. Jeffords of Vermont and Nancy Landon Kassebaum of Kansas. The only Democrat to vote against advancing the bill was Richard C. Shelby of Alabama.
Specter, who was the first Republican to disclose that he would support the administration bill, said: "My (GOP) colleagues know I make up my own mind on these things. I spoke up on it, starting two weeks ago."
He took issue with other Republicans who contended that the bill was laden with unworkable pork-barrel spending.
"Of the $30 billion, more than $27 billion is for tough law enforcement, including more money for police, for prisons, for the Violence Against Women provision, and only $2.8 billion is for crime-prevention programs," Specter said. "And those programs are important, too."
Among those prevention programs is a $625 million grant to the nation's 15 largest cities, including Philadelphia.
Jeffords said: "I'm up for re-election. There are times when you can help your party out, but there are times when you have to look out for your state and your political life."
Kassebaum suggested that most of her colleagues - unlike her - did not really want a bill but rather an opportunity to deny an important political victory to Clinton.
Noting that Mitchell had offered to permit a vote on stripping $5 billion in social spending from the legislation, Kassebaum said that appeared to be a fair offer to her.
"A vote on that would clearly have delineated the differences between the two parties," she said, "and I think it's unfortunate that my Republican colleagues chose not to accept this offer."
As it became apparent that enough Republicans would cross over to support the bill, Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (R., Utah) launched one last, desperate bid to retrieve their votes.
"I pledge that if we sustain this point of order . . . we will deliver a tougher crime bill to the American people," Hatch said, saying a new bill would boost spending for law enforcement and prisons and "cut more pork."
The bill, he argued, "is not tough on crime, and most of the money will be spent to help people (the Democrats) want to re-elect. The American people have been suckered once again."
And GOP conservatives groused about their colleagues who switched sides.
"Judases," said Sen. Jesse Helms (R., N.C.).
Sen. Trent Lott (R., Miss.) was asked how party leaders would view the defections.
"Without a lot of appreciation," he replied. "This is a big one. So we expected them to stay together, both for the sake of party loyalty and for the sake of adherence to principle."
For him, it was a litmus test of loyalty. "This is one where we were running up the colors, and it was time to take a stand," Lott said.
Interwoven in all the complaints about pork in the bill was Republican determination not to hand Clinton - and Democratic lawmakers running for re- election - an issue to strengthen their party.
"I'd like to drive a stake through this crime bill," Lott said.
"I think we would enjoy the opportunity of taking credit for killing the crime bill," said Sen. Thad Cochran (R., Miss.).
Their resentment was rooted in the conviction that Clinton had somehow wrested from them an issue on which Republicans have routinely bludgeoned Democrats in election campaigns.
Sen. John Kerry (D., Mass.) said: "The Republicans are terrified that Democrats will somehow get credit for being tough on crime. Their whole opposition over the past two weeks has been based on a political strategy of trying to win back an issue they had long considered to be their own."
Aside from the assault-weapons ban, the crime bill will:
* Spend $13.45 billion for state, local and federal police, including $8.8 billion for a matching program to help hire 100,000 new law enforcement officers.
* Spend $9.85 billion for prisons, including $7.9 billion for state prison grants and $1.8 billion to reimburse states for incarcerating criminal illegal immigrants.
* Spend $6.9 billion for crime-prevention programs, including $1 billion for drug courts. The prevention efforts include $1.6 billion for the Violence Against Women Act, including money for shelters, and $1.6 billion for flexible Local Partnership Act grants.
* Toss third-time violent and drug felons in prison for life if the third conviction is in federal court.
* Create more than 50 new federal death-penalty crimes, including carjacking slayings, drive-by shooting murders and major drug trafficking, even when the trafficker is not directly connected to a specific death.
HIGHLIGHTS OF THE CRIME BILL SIGNED TODAY
Mercury News, The (San Jose, CA)
September 13, 1994
https://infoweb.newsbank.com/
The $30.2 billion, six-year crime legislation authorizes:
* Tossing third-time felons into prison for life -- "three strikes, you're out" -- while allowing the release of some over age 70 after they serve 30 years. The first two felonies could be state crimes of violence or drugs, but the third must be a violent crime and must be adjudicated in federal court.
* Creating 60 new federal death penalty crimes. Many carried that penalty before the Supreme Court overturned capital punishment in 1972. But some would be new, including car-jacking slayings, drive-by murders and major drug-trafficking, even when the trafficker is not directly connected to a specific death. Some of the crimes, such as car-jacking, would have to involve either a federal offense such as drug-trafficking or an interstate aspect to wind up in federal court.
* Banning 19 named assault-style firearms and scores of copycats and others deemed to have similar characteristics, effective today and lasting 10 years. It would limit magazine capacity to 10 rounds. It would exempt 650 named firearms and all guns and magazines legally owned today. Since magazines have no serial numbers, the government would have to prove that a magazine was made after today.
* Allowing some non-violent, first-time drug offenders to avoid mandatory minimum 5- and 10-year federal penalties. They would have to serve at least two years. This would be limited to those who use no gun or threat of violence, are not organizers and never served more than 90 days in jail for another crime.
* Letting prosecutors in rape trials introduce evidence of prior sex offenses by the defendant, even if there was no charge and no conviction on the previous offense.
* Trying juveniles as young as 13 as adults for violent federal crimes such as murder, assault, robbery and rape. Prohibits giving handguns to minors.
* Preventing people from buying guns if they are subject to a court restraining order because of family violence.
* Requiring sexual predators and those who prey on children to register with state law enforcement agencies, which may notify the community when the offenders are released.
* Spending $10.8 billion for state and local law enforcement, including $8.8 billion for a matching program to help hire 100,000 new law enforcement officers to carry out community policing.
* Spending $2.6 billion for federal law enforcement, including $1.2 billion to beef up the Border Patrol.
* Spending $9.85 billion for prisons, including $7.9 billion for state prison grants and $1.8 billion to reimburse states for incarcerating criminal illegal aliens.
* Spending $6.9 billion for crime prevention programs, including $1 billion for drug courts. The prevention efforts include $1.6 billion for the Violence Against Women Act, including money for shelters, and $1.6 billion for flexible Local Partnership Act grants.
* A trust fund to pay the bill's entire cost. The money would come from savings from reductions in the federal work force.
GOP Contract Aims at Clinton Crime Bill
New Congress would maneuver funding to eliminate most spending on prevention-oriented social programs
Christian Science Monitor, The
December 6, 1994
https://infoweb.newsbank.com/
IF House Republicans in the next Congress get their way, President Clinton's plan to enhance crime-prevention programs may be in trouble.
In their ``Contract With America,'' the soon-to-be-majority House members indicate they would maneuver funding for prevention programs in such a way that money would likely be almost eliminated.
The Clinton plan combines funding for additional police and crime-prevention programs and lets local governments decide how to allocate the money. The provision to put 100,000 more police on the streets is popular in both parties.
In the $30-billion omnibus anticrime bill that Clinton signed into law in September, Congress authorized $8.8 billion over six years for the hiring of 100,000 new police across the country and $6.9 billion for crime-prevention programs.
The Republican contract would authorize only $10 billion over five years to cover both in local block grants. So in theory, local governments, under the GOP plan, could use all or most of their federal money for hiring police, paying for overtime, and purchasing equipment and technology that enhance law enforcement.
``We may wind up with more than 100,000 new police if local governments decide that's where they want to put their resources,'' says an aide to the House Republican Conference.
But if they did so, little or no money would be left for social programs, such as midnight basketball. Alternatively, local authorities could decide that social programs needed the funds more and hire fewer new police - but police organizations that strongly back the plan to bolster police forces express little concern that that might happen.
Left out in the cold are the social-justice advocates and criminologists who argue that society does too little to keep people, especially youth, away from the influences of the crime culture.
The contract eliminates one fledgling program outright, drug courts, which are meant to rehabilitate first-time and nonviolent drug offenders rather than put them in prison. The bill that Clinton signed authorized $1 billion over five years for them. In addition, the contract makes no mention of the Violence Against Women Act, a $1.6 billion program in the recently signed law that provides for new federal penalties and grant programs aimed at reducing crimes against women, such as domestic violence.
Democrats only sigh when asked about changes the new Republican majority wants to make. ``We struck a careful and smart balance in our bill,'' says an aide to a Democratic senator. Now, he adds, ``there's a hope we don't go back to the old days when we didn't look ahead and everybody was trying to out-tough each other.''
During last summer's debate on the crime bill, some Republicans vocally opposed what they called pork-barrel spending on soft social programs. Now, they say, it's their chance to fix the law and put in place the proper balance of get-tough measures. ``The supporters of social programs should be glad they weren't cut completely,'' says the House Republican Conference aide.
The Republican approach is bolstered by public opinion. With crime at or near the top of Americans' concerns, get-tough measures play well with the public. The death penalty, building more prisons, and policies that lock 'em up and throw away the keys enjoy large majorities of public support. (Ironically, Federal Bureau of Investigation crime statistics released over the weekend show that reported crime in the first six months of 1994 declined by 3 percent over the same period last year and i s at its lowest level since 1986 - though murders are up by 3.2 percent .)
Last Friday, Clinton warned against efforts to make major changes in his anticrime law, and he singled out the provision banning some assault weapons. The contract does not call for a repeal of the ban, but some gun-rights supporters, emboldened by the Republican sweep in last month's elections, have started talking about trying to do that.
The focus of the contract's ``Take Back Our Streets Act'' is punishment as a deterrent to crime. The first reform concerns the legal procedure known as habeas corpus, in which prisoners can file virtually endless appeals to their sentences. Under the reform, a one-year filing limit would be placed on habeas corpus appeals.
Also included in the crime provision of the contract:
* Mandatory minimum sentences for drug crimes that involve guns. The punishment for a first conviction would be 10 years, 20 years for a second conviction, and life in prison for a third.
* Authorization of $10.5 billion over six years for the building of prisons. This would allow for more ``truth in sentencing,'' i.e., prisoners would serve a greater portion of their sentence than is now the case, say Republicans.
* Greater flexibility in waiving the ``exclusionary rule.'' Current law would be amended to allow introduction of evidence obtained in good faith by police officers who believed they were following the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution, even in the absence of a search warrant.
*********************************************
Supreme Court strikes down violence against women act
CNN
May 15, 2000
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The Supreme Court ruled Monday that Congress had exceeded its constitutional authority in trying to give women who were victims of sexual violence the ability to sue for civil damages in federal courts under the Constitution's Commerce Clause.
The court struck down provisions of the Violence Against Women Act by a 5-4 majority.
"Gender motivated crimes of violence are not in any sense economic activity," Chief Justice William Rehnquist wrote for the majority.
Virginia Tech student Christy Brzonkala had filed suit under the act alleging two football players had raped her in a university dormitory in 1994.
Her case contended that because she subsequently dropped out of college she had suffered an economic consequence of a lesser education and poorer job opportunities.
But the conservative wing of the court found neither the Commerce Clause nor the 14th Amendment suitable for congress to pass such a law.
"If the allegations are true, no civilized system of justice could fail to provide a remedy," Rehnquist said in delivering the court's opinion. "But it must come from the Commonwealth of Virginia, not the federal government."
The ruling comes in two combined cases: Brzonkala v. Morrison and United States v. Morrison, argued January 11, 2000.
The Supreme Court: The court on federalism; Women lose right to sue attackers in federal court
NY Times
May 16, 2000
Declaring that ''the Constitution requires a distinction between what is truly national and what is truly local,'' the Supreme Court today invalidated a six-year-old provision of federal law that permitted victims of rape, domestic violence and other crimes ''motivated by gender'' to sue their attackers in federal court.
The 5-to-4 decision, striking down the civil remedy provision of the Violence Against Women Act, was the latest application of the court's newly restrictive view of Congressional power and of the degree of deference that Congress is owed by federal courts. Although one of the most sweeping of the justices' decisions in this area recently, it will almost certainly not be the last.
Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist's majority opinion rejected each of the two sources of constitutional authority that Congress had asserted as the basis for the legislation. The majority concluded that the civil remedy provision was neither a valid regulation of interstate commerce nor a proper means of enforcing the equal protection guarantee of the 14th Amendment.
The decision affirmed a ruling last year by the federal appeals court in Richmond, Va., dismissing a suit brought by a college student against two varsity football players whom she accused of raping her in her dormitory room shortly after the start of her freshman year.
The plaintiff, Christy Brzonkala, withdrew from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and brought her suit after learning that the football players, Antonio Morrison and James Crawford, would not be disciplined by the college. When the defendants then challenged the constitutionality of the Violence Against Women Act, the federal government intervened in the suit to defend the law.
The law's supporters argued that widespread violence against women, and fear of violence, had a negative effect on the nation's economy, measured in the billions of dollars a year, by impairing the productivity and the mobility of female employees and students. To accept that reasoning, the chief justice said today, ''would allow Congress to regulate any crime as long as the nationwide, aggregated impact of that crime has substantial effects on employment, production, transit or consumption.'' But a general police power is something ''which the founders denied the national government and reposed in the states,'' he added.
The Violence Against Women Act also has a criminal provision, making it a federal crime to cross state lines to engage in domestic violence or stalking. The Supreme Court last year refused to hear a challenge to that provision, which was not at issue in the case today but which the chief justice suggested in a footnote was constitutional because of the explicit requirement of interstate conduct. The law also provides federal money to the states for programs to prevent violence and assist victims.
Much of the attention and debate surrounding the law has focused on the civil damages provision at issue today, which the lower courts have applied some 50 times, a number that would probably have been larger had the law not been under a constitutional cloud. While most states have laws permitting people, including victims of sexual assaults, to seek damages against their attackers, Congress acted after dozens of studies showed that women seeking such relief faced considerable obstacles from state judicial systems that regarded sex offenses as unworthy of serious attention.
Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr., the chief Senate sponsor of the Violence Against Women Act, said at a news conference today that ''this decision is really all about power: who has the power, the court or Congress?''
Senator Biden, a Democrat from Delaware, said there had been notable improvement in the states since Congress put the issue on its agenda in the early 1990's. He predicted that the decision today ''will have a lot less impact on violence against women than on the future role of the United States Congress,'' adding, ''The damage done to the act is not as bad as the damage done to American jurisprudence.''
Both Senator Biden and Senator Charles E. Schumer, a New York Democrat who was the law's chief sponsor when he represented Brooklyn in the House of Representatives, said years of hearings before the legislation was passed had been aimed at compiling a record of the scope of the problem, to persuade the Supreme Court that a national solution was warranted.
''Just at a time when the economic and social conditions of the world demand that we be treated as one country and not as 50 states, the Supreme Court seems poised to undo decades and decades of a consensus that the federal government has an active role to play,'' Senator Schumer said in an interview.
In a dissenting opinion today, Justice David H. Souter included three pages of the findings from various Congressional reports, and predicted that the majority's ''new judicially derived federalism'' would eventually prove as serious a wrong turn for the court as the decisions of the 1930's that, in rejecting elements of the New Deal, provoked the court-packing crisis of 1937. Referring to that episode's ''pedigree of near-tragedy,'' Justice Souter said that ''today's decision can only be seen as a step toward recapturing the prior mistakes.''
The justices' 5-to-4 division was familiar from a series of decisions over the last five years that have struck down federal laws or created new state immunities from the application of federal law. Beginning with its ruling in United States v. Lopez in 1995, which overturned a law against carrying a gun near a school and marked the first time since the New Deal that the court had invalidated a law as exceeding the power of Congress to regulate interstate commerce, the court has also struck down part of the Brady gun control law and laws making states liable to suit in federal court for patent and trademark violations. Earlier this year, the court ruled that states could not be sued by their employees for violating the Age Discrimination in Employment Act.
Joining Chief Justice Rehnquist in the majority today, as in all the other decisions, were Justices Sandra Day O'Connor, Antonin Scalia, Anthony M. Kennedy and Clarence Thomas. Justice Thomas wrote a brief concurring opinion to say that the court should have put Congress under an even tighter rein. Justice Stephen G. Breyer wrote a dissenting opinion and also signed Justice Souter's dissent, as did Justices John Paul Stevens and Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
Although the tone of the opinions today, totaling 71 pages, was quite muted, the gulf between the two factions of the court is wide and growing wider. The court has already granted review in three more federalism cases, and the decision today, United States v. Morrison, No. 99-5, is likely to inspire more challenges to the reliance of Congress on its authority to regulate interstate commerce. Federal environmental regulations that restrict the use of private property might present an inviting target for such a challenge, some students of these recent developments believe.
Chief Justice Rehnquist's majority opinion today reiterated that the ''economic nature of the regulated activity'' was at the heart of any analysis of Congress's exercise of its commerce authority. ''Gender-motivated crimes of violence are not, in any sense of the phrase, economic activity,'' he said.
The opinion stopped short of adopting a categorical rule that Congress can never do what it claimed to do in this law: address the aggregate economic effect of activity that itself may not be inherently economic. But the chief justice noted pointedly that the court had never endorsed such an approach. In any event, he said, the court is and will remain ''the ultimate expositor of the constitutional text.''
In his dissenting opinion, Justice Souter said that when it came to ''supposed conflicts of sovereign political interests implicated by the Commerce Clause,'' the court should step back and let the political system work out the problem. Noting that 36 states had filed briefs supporting the law, he said it was ''not the least irony'' of the case that ''the states will be forced to enjoy the new federalism whether they want it or not.''
Chief Justice Rehnquist said the provision could not be sustained under the 14th Amendment because that amendment prohibits discrimination by states or ''state actors'' rather than the private individuals whose conduct is the target of this law.
Kathryn J. Rodgers, executive director of the NOW Legal Defense and Education Fund, which represented Ms. Brzonkala (pronounced brahn-KAH-lah), criticized the decision, saying it took ''the federal government out of the business of defining civil rights and creating remedies.''
Michael E. Rosman, general counsel of the Center for Individual Rights, which challenged the law on behalf of the defendants, said the decision was a welcome reminder that ''democratic majorities are limited by the text of the Constitution.''
''This was an effort by Congress to aggrandize its authority,'' Mr. Rosman added, ''and the court is now requiring Congress to toe the constitutional line.''
