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“TIME FOR AN EMERGENCY NATIONAL MORATORIUM ON THE DEATH PENALTY” mentioning the U.S. Dept. of Justice was published in the House of Representatives section on pages H1944 on April 6, 2000.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
TIME FOR AN EMERGENCY NATIONAL MORATORIUM ON THE DEATH PENALTY
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Davis) is recognized for 5 minutes.
Mr. DAVIS of Illinois. Mr. Speaker, in the United States of America, the land of the free in this millenium year, we have today some 2 million people in our jails. We are 5 percent of the world's population, and yet 25 percent of the world's incarcerated persons.
In an ominous echo to General Eisenhower's farewell address, we now have a prison industrial complex in our Nation which feeds on some 35 billion public dollars each year to operate prisons, and more than $7 billion on new construction for prisons each year.
The prison industrial complex employs more than 523,000 people, making it the country's biggest employer after General Motors. More than 5 percent of the growth of our rural population is due to the movement of men and women to prisons located in rural America.
Even more ominous is the growing number of men and women put to death by our injustice system. There are now more than 3,600 men and women on death row. Most ominous is the immense and persistent disparity in the impact of the justice system. There is a real and growing perception that there are two sets of rules, two standards of treatment by law enforcement in America, one set for whites and another quite different set for African-Americans, Latinos, and all who might be poor.
In Chicago, we have had the cases of Commander John Burge, of Jeremiah Mearday, and off Ryan Harris and numerous others. This pattern of conduct is unacceptable. The perception of injustice has been substantiated by the stunning sequence of events which has led to 13 death penalty convictions in Illinois being overturned over the past decade or so by hard evidence which demonstrated a miscarriage of justice.
I am particularly concerned about a number of death penalty cases originally investigated by former Chicago police Commander John Burge or officers under his command which were based on so-called confessions, and other evidence which may have been coerced by torture.
The revelations of torture, including electric shock, suffocation, burning, beating, and Russian roulette have been widely reported and independently confirmed, and have roused the indignation of the people of Illinois.
The cases of Aaron Patterson and Darrell Cannon are the first of these cases to reach the final phases of appeal. In 1985, the then Chief Justice Warren Burger said, ``What business enterprise could conceivably succeed with the rate of recall of its products that we see in the `products' of our prisons?''
The failure of our justice system not only robs individuals of life and liberty, but undermines our communities and our Nation. The failures also are an attack on our legal and social infrastructure, on our Constitution, and on our Nation's economic, social, and cultural progress.
There is extensive historical precedent for Federal intervention in cases where the justice and law enforcement systems fail to provide equal protection under the law in general, and specifically, protection in instances of police misconduct against African-Americans and other minorities.
It is no accident that our Department of Justice was born in 1871, following the Civil War, as a response to the wave of hate crime terror instituted by the Ku Klux Klan and where local law enforcement was unable or unwilling to provide justice and in some cases joined in the terror.
The concerns over these and other cases have rightly led Governor Ryan of Illinois to declare a moratorium on the death penalty in Illinois and to appoint a commission to study the problem.
Now is the time for men and women of principle to stand and demand an end to the cancer eating at our freedom, not tomorrow, but today, this hour, is the time for an immediate emergency national moratorium on the death penalty. I would urge the Nation to follow the suit of the Governor of Illinois and declare that injustice will not continue to be done until we find how to do it and how to do it right.
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