William Edwards: “Mr. Chairman, this is a repeat debate over an old issue. I certainly have not changed my position, but I do not think we…”

“Mr. Chairman, this is a repeat debate over an old issue. I certainly have not changed my position, but I do not think we ought to make it easier to implement a law that is very clearly wrong. The law established in 1977 by Coker against Georgia by the Supreme Court was very explicit. That case was a terrible rape case, a brutal rape case, but the woman was not killed. The Supreme Court ruled, and I believe it was 7 to 2, that the death penalty was disproportionate, and therefore unconstitutional under cruel and unusual punishment, because for the Government to execute someone in connection with another crime, somebody should have been killed, somebody should have been murdered. Even in this brutal rape case, the Supreme Court said that it was inappropriate and unconstitutional, cruel and unusual, to have the death penalty. Mr. Chairman, the subcommittee that I chair just in the last few weeks received a report on the implementation of the drug kingpin law that was put into effect a number of years ago. We found that, out of 37, I believe, Federal drug kingpin capital cases, the death penalty was administered disproportionately against minorities.”