U.S. House of Representatives, Committee on the Judiciary
Statement of the Honorable William D. Delahunt of Massachusetts

In Support of the Delahunt-Scott Amendment to Title 1 of H.R. 3275, The Terrorist Bombings Convention Implementation Act of 2001

November 15, 2001

Mr. Chairman, I have an amend­ment at the desk.

Mr. Chairman, this amend­ment, in which I am joined by my good friend, the rank­ing mem­ber of the Crime Subcommittee (Mr. Scott), would delete the lan­guage autho­riz­ing the impo­si­tion of the death penal­ty for the offens­es set forth under section 102.

Yesterday, at our sub­com­mit­tee hear­ing, the Administration wit­ness­es acknowl­edged that this pro­vi­sion is not required by the inter­na­tion­al con­ven­tion we are seek­ing to imple­ment. In fact, Mr. Chairman, not only is it not required by the con­ven­tion, but it could actu­al­ly impair the fight against inter­na­tion­al ter­ror­ism — by mak­ing it hard­er for the Justice Department to secure extra­di­tion in these kinds of cases.

Our con­tin­ued use of the death penal­ty has brought con­dem­na­tion from civ­i­lized nations across the globe. Even some of our clos­est allies — such as Canada — have begun to refuse extra­di­tion requests by the United States unless their courts can be assured that the defen­dants will not face exe­cu­tion. Given that sit­u­a­tion, how can it serve our nation­al inter­ests to enact addi­tion­al pro­vi­sions that fur­ther mar­gin­al­ize us with­in the fam­i­ly of nations?

The only answer I have heard is that this new death penal­ty pro­vi­sion mere­ly tracks cur­rent law with respect to com­pa­ra­ble domes­tic crimes. That may well be. But the fact that cur­rent law presents an obsta­cle to our law enforce­ment objec­tives is hard­ly a per­sua­sive argu­ment for com­pound­ing the problem.

The fact is that no per­sua­sive argu­ment can be made. People will con­tin­ue to dis­agree about whether the death penal­ty acts as a deter­rent to cer­tain cat­e­gories of crimes. But with respect to the type of crime we are address­ing in this leg­is­la­tion, is there any­one who seri­ous­ly believes that the prospect of the death penal­ty will deter ter­ror­ists from com­mit­ting the kinds of atroc­i­ties our nation expe­ri­enced on September 11?

No, Mr. Chairman. Let us imple­ment these con­ven­tions with all due speed. But let us do so in a way that advances our nation­al objec­tives. I urge sup­port for the amend­ment and yield back the bal­ance of my time.