Ed Bryant

On Thursday, April 22, this year, the day will mark the 100th anniversary of the creation of one of the finest towns in the United States--Dickson, Tennessee.

Let me also respond regarding an inquiry that our colleague from California made on the statistics of perjury from that State

I would just simply state that this is a very commonsense measure. Again, the States that are at issue here are asking the other States in this country to spend taxpayer money to reimburse their public hospitals for this type of treatment…

Mr. Chairman, I might also say for noncapital cases, for people who are appointed in Federal court to represent people who go to jail for life sentences, it might not be capital cases, but who go to jail for 20 or 30 years of their life…

We are not talking about everybody that is convicted of a crime that has to do this, but you know I always talked about on the campaign trail that we had I believe about 300 people on death row in Tennessee. And I told everybody if they…

They are usually specific lawyer capital resources centers that are publicly funded that are the experts from the defense standpoint and are able to use the system of appeal that we have just talked about in an effort to get a new trial…

Probably 100 percent of them are being paid by taxpayers at either State expense, or certainly at Federal expense.

Of course, that depends on the States. But I think you are looking, as opposed to the 10 to 15 years that are probably average today, you are looking at a much shorter period of time. If you could keep it under 5 years and work down from…

Generally under the law that we passed today, if it is a State appeal, a State conviction they are appealing from, they have 1 year in which to file their habeas corpus petition. If it is a Federal appeal in which they are applying for…

Literally, ``habeas corpus'' means ``you have the body.'' It started out in the 1800s, as I remember reading, where people who were wrongfully convicted, or even perhaps kept in jail without a trial, used that as a mechanism to have a…

Of course, there has been a number of prosecutors, people involved in the legal system, but I would suspect both Jack and Linda have seen demands from their constituents, as I did, that we ought to make some changes here in our judicial…

The Supreme Court. We are just expanding what they are doing to allow for this reasonable mistake on the part of the police officer in gathering evidence. If he makes a reasonable mistake in good faith, that is subject to the same…

In this body we are talking about following what the courts are already beginning to do as the pendulum swings back toward a fair balance in protecting not only, again, not only the criminals' rights, but the victims' rights.