William Edwards: “Mr. Chairman, I listened with great interest to the gentleman from Wisconsin and my good friend, the gentleman from…”

“Mr. Chairman, I listened with great interest to the gentleman from Wisconsin and my good friend, the gentleman from Illinois [Mr. Hyde] and they have been complaining for months and even years that the habeas system is not working, that there is petition after petition; we have 3,000 people on death row; nothing can get done; delay, delay, delay. And then when they have the opportunity to offer something that will cure this deplorable situation, and it is deplorable, what do they do? they offer nothing. They just strike a very good provision in this bill that is real reform. It is conservative reform in a lot of ways, because the person condemned can only appeal once under a petition in habeas corpus, and it must be done within 1 year after the final appeal in the State courts. The heart of the matter is, my colleagues, that it provides for decent counsel, competent counsel, in the trial and in the appeal process. That is the reason that we have these delays. There is no disagreement that this is the reason these delays take place. We are curing that ill. The gentleman from Illinois [Mr. Hyde] is offering no attorney provisions at all. It is an empty gesture. He apparently likes the present system.”