James Traficant: “Mr. Speaker I am proud to support the bill and the fine efforts of the committee to bring this bill out. As a former…”

“Mr. Speaker I am proud to support the bill and the fine efforts of the committee to bring this bill out. As a former sheriff, I have a couple of amendments that I would like to discuss on this bill. I think they are important and make the bill favorable. First of all, many times you have individuals that provide the testimony that gets a conviction in a courtroom. Some of these individuals are convicted and some of these felons say, ``When I get out of jail, I'm going to hurt you. I'm going to get you, Judge,'' or ``I'm going to get you who turned that evidence against me.'' After they come out, as evidenced by an article in the Readers Digest, too often they come back and live up to that promise, and they literally at times have not only hurt some of those victims or some of those people who have brought the evidence, they have killed them as well. The first Traficant amendment says 30 days prior to release they notify the principals that this felon is being released into the community, the victims, the people that gave the testimony against them, the judge and the jury, anybody who was involved in that that may be a principal.”