Gregory Laughlin: “I believe in the death penalty. In fact, I tried some murder cases where if the law would have allowed it I would have…”

“I believe in the death penalty. In fact, I tried some murder cases where if the law would have allowed it I would have pulled the switch. But today we are faced with the Hyde amendment that has passed and the law is still the same and the victims' families are wondering what are we going to do about it. Are we going to leave it the same or will we adopt the Derrick amendment that puts in a statute of limitations of 1 year, limits one petition, and something no one has addressed is the Derrick amendment says new rules will not be treated retroactively. Mr. Chairman, I want to say something about competent counsel. There have been attacks on the Derrick amendment about competent counsel. I understand about 40 percent of the death penalty cases that are reversed on appeal are because of incompetent counsel. The barbarians did not allow the defendants and the accused to have lawyers before they executed them and in this century we had a tragic, sorry state of affairs in Europe where people were put to death without benefit of counsel. Mr. Chairman, I commend the gentleman and I would urge support of the Derrick amendment and I would encourage support of competent lawyers for the accused.”