Political Quotes

“Mr. Chairman, I rise to respond to a number of issues that have been raised in this debate. First of all, the Watt amendment does not talk about innocence, but uses a word which is much stricter in the law, and that is that the matter would probably have resulted in an acquittal. That is a very high standard. We are not using the more amorphous word ``innocent'' here. Moreover, you have just rejected the Schumer amendment. More than half of all attorneys handling capital trials have had no previous death penalty experience. So the probability of finding newly discovered evidence is great, and we are not even willing to say that a man or woman standing on trial for his or her life should have competent counsel. At the very least then we ought to say if incompetent counsel has not found evidence, newly discovered evidence can be brought forward. There was discussion of due diligence here. It may be in the bill, but the fact is it is a judge-made rule in any case, and probably the court would find, based on the way courts have looked at these matters in the past, that if due diligence had not been exercised, the court would be more likely to find this was not newly discovered evidence at all. We are dealing with a situation where 40 percent of death penalty cases heard in the Federal courts have been granted relief because of significant constitutional error.”