Senate Passes Drug-Murder Death Penalty

WASHINGTON — The Senate, reacting to election-year pressures brought on by an increase in violent crime on the nation’s streets, Thursday overwhelmingly approved a new federal death penalty to be imposed in drug-related murder cases.

By a vote of 64 to 25, the Senate rejected an effort by Sen. Mark O. Hatfield (R-Ore.) to strike the death penalty from an omnibus anti-drug bill, which was brought to the floor for debate Thursday after weeks of back-room haggling.

Since the House already has passed a similar provision, the Senate vote guarantees that murderers who deal in drugs soon will be subject to the death penalty, providing that the long-delayed legislation clears the 100th Congress before final adjournment, probably next week.

Rendered Unenforceable

The only federal crimes that now are subject to capital punishment are espionage by a member of the armed forces and murder committed during an airline piracy, according to congressional legal scholars. All other federal death penalty statutes were rendered unenforceable by a 1972 Supreme Court decision.

The vote was a big victory for Sen. Alphonse M. D’Amato (R-N.Y.), chief proponent of the death penalty, whose efforts to impose capital punishment in past years have met with unrelenting opposition from Senate liberals on both sides of the aisle. He attributed his victory this year to the increase in drug-related murders, which has generated public sentiment for tougher government action against drug dealers.

“We wouldn’t have a drug bill let alone a death penalty were it not an election year,” D’Amato acknowledged. “I make no apology for that.” But he insisted that it is “not an election-year ploy” to win votes for either party.

Although D’Amato and other conservatives conceded that it would not bring an end to drug-related crimes, they argued that drug traffickers now virtually are fearless in their use of violence and that a death penalty might be an effective deterrent in some cases.

“It’s about time we struck some fear in their hearts,” D’Amato declared.

Liberals, who were persuaded by a 65-29 test vote on the issue last June that a filibuster would not succeed in blocking the death penalty this year as it did in 1986, nevertheless argued strenuously against the measure. Hatfield, among others, portrayed it as “a principle and a mentality unworthy of a civilized society.

“How is it possible that the issue of being ‘tough on drugs’ has come to be framed on how one votes on the question of the death penalty?” he asked. “Why is it that the Senate’s resolve to fight drug abuse and drug-related crimes hangs on whether we will flip the switch on the electric chair?”

Hatfield attributed the shift in sentiment in the Senate in the past two years to what he called “the 1980s trend of combatting complex, intractable problems with quick solutions and effortless remedies.

“So if we want to address a drought in Africa, we hold a rock concert,” he said. “If we want to cut the federal deficit, we pretend we can grow out of it and then give everyone a little more pocket change. And now with the war on drugs, we just enact a federal death penalty, appropriate a few billion dollars and send out the press releases claiming victory over drugs.”

Liberals tried without success to convince the Senate that a mandatory sentence of life in prison without parole would be a better deterrent. Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) argued that no one would ever be put to death under D’Amato’s provision because the procedures prescribed to protect the defendant’s rights are too complicated.

But Republicans countered by bringing up the case of Willie Horton, a man who attacked a Maryland couple after being furloughed from a life prison sentence in Massachusetts. This case is the basis for GOP presidential candidate George Bush’s contention that his Democratic opponent, Massachusetts Gov. Michael S. Dukakis, has let criminals go free.

The Horton case, according to Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.), proves that any prisoner can obtain a furlough and “it is not possible to have a life sentence without parole.”

Sen. Pete Wilson (R-Calif.), a death penalty proponent who has made the fight against drugs a centerpiece of his reelection campaign, said that he bases his view in part on personal experience. He said that he “never knew my grandfather on my mother’s side” because he was killed in Chicago in 1908 while working as a police detective in pursuit of a cocaine ring.

“Civilization is not worthy of the name if the decent and law-abiding are not protected from the uncivilized,” Wilson added.

Sen. Alan Cranston (D-Calif.), an opponent of the death penalty, was absent and did not vote.

Although the House-passed death-penalty provision is broader, the differences in the two measures are not expected to present a major stumbling block to final exactment of the drug bill. Both were drafted in an effort to meet Supreme Court guidelines on capital punishment.

The House provision authorizes, but does not require, imposition of the death penalty for murders carried out in connection with a drug felony.

The Senate version authorizes, but does not require, the imposition of the death penalty for a person involved in a continuing drug enterprise who “intentionally or with reckless indifference to human life, kills or participates substantially” in the killing of another person. It also allows capital punishment for someone who kills a law enforcement officer in connection with a drug-related felony.

The defendant in these cases would be provided a separate sentencing hearing under the Senate provision and the judge would be permitted to consider a number of mitigating factors in imposing the death penalty such as whether the defendant is under 18, whether he can appreciate the consequences of his action and whether his role in the crime was minor.