Political Quotes

“Ladies and gentleman, the Derrick amendment is of such enormous importance now that I cannot begin to tell my colleagues that unless we have this amendment we are going to be doing what four attorneys general have begged us not to do to the Constitution of the United States. And these are Ben Civiletti, Nicholas Katzenbach, Edward Levi, and Eliot Richardson who have said the Federal courts have no higher mission than to uphold the Constitution, and habeas corpus has been since the founding of the Republic the primary means of access to the Federal courts for the people who are unconstitutionally imprisoned. Mr. Chairman, remember, the courts have found constitutional errors in 40 percent of the cases reviewed. Do we want to leave our crime bill with that glaring fact in front of us? Mr. Chairman, Curt Bloodworth, for instance, sat on death row in Maryland from 1983 to 1994 before genetic evidence proved him innocent. Thanks, habeas corpus. Joseph Brown was within 15 hours of being executed but the Federal court freed him after it found that prosecutors had deliberately misled the jury. Thanks, habeas corpus. Roger Coleman was not so lucky. He was executed when the Federal courts refused to hear his appeal because a lawyer had missed a deadline by 3 days. I urge my colleagues to support the Derrick amendment if we believe in the Constitution.”