John Conyers: “In expanding the definition of war crimes in this bill to include not only grave breaches of the Geneva Convention but…”

“In expanding the definition of war crimes in this bill to include not only grave breaches of the Geneva Convention but also breaches of any other convention or protocol to which the U.S. is or becomes a signatory, this becomes prospective. Maybe somebody can explain this to me. Why are we writing legislation to cover protocols and agreements into the future, maybe long beyond the time any of us might be serving in this distinguished body? Do any of my colleagues know the answer to that? I will research it for us and get back to my colleagues on that. Now, this companion piece of legislation establishes jurisdiction over the war crimes, and it became law in the last Congress. It includes a provision which permitted the imposition of the death penalty in cases where the victim of the war crime was killed, and therein lies the problem. We support our war crime legislation, but we do not believe such legislation should include a death penalty in order to be effective. Does anybody here disagree with that? In other words, if we had left the death penalty out, we would not be here today.”