Melvin Watt: “I just wanted to make it plain to the gentleman that what I am complaining about is not the Federal offenses, but there…”

“I just wanted to make it plain to the gentleman that what I am complaining about is not the Federal offenses, but there is no reason that we ought to say to the State of New York, which has their own legislative body and has, based on the gentleman's party's proposition, a right as a State to make its own laws, that every multiple killing in the State of New York ought to carry the death penalty, if the State of New York has made a decision of its own that they will have no death penalty in State offenses. That is the point that I am making. This is way, way too broad, and it is totally inconsistent with the philosophies that I have heard espoused from the other side of this body consistently during this term of Congress.”