On the recordFebruary 8, 1995
It is well-known, and it is so well-embedded in the Congressional Record in previous sessions and in newspaper reports, television reports, and in every poll known to mankind that the American people, by a wide margin, 75, 80 percent, favor the imposition of the death penalty in a proper case. They do not exactly favor the imposition of the death penalty, they favor the concept of allowing a jury that hears the facts to have the option of listening to whether aggravating circumstances appear in a particularly vicious case to determine that a death penalty is the proper sentence. Mr. Chairman, the amendment that we have here returns us to the stone age of the death penalty, where discretion was so freakishly applied by the jury, and that word 'freakishly' is in the Supreme Court opinion that struck down the death penalty, that we cannot be certain that bias and prejudice would not enter into the final decision made by the jury.
Source
govinfo.gov
