Orrin Hatch: “It is bad enough that an administration that purports to support the death penalty has publicly stated its neutrality on…”

“It is bad enough that an administration that purports to support the death penalty has publicly stated its neutrality on title IX. It is even worse that the same administration is reportedly working behind the scenes to salvage what it can of this legislation. Attorney General Reno, in response to my questions at a hearing last week, disclosed that the administration may attempt to modify title IX so that it applies only to cases in the Federal system. Even as so modified, title IX would not be acceptable. In the first place, it would result in the abolition of the Federal death penalty at the very time that the administration is purporting to support expansion of the Federal death penalty. It is worth noting that, according to a recent article, Attorney General Reno has approved seeking the Federal death penalty against nine defendants, all of whom are black. Now I do not believe for a second that Attorney General Reno has been acting in a racially discriminatory manner. But the false compromise that the Clinton administration is working on would compel this faulty inference as a matter of law. Second, a statistical quota system that would apply, for the time being, only to the Federal Government should give States no more comfort than the German invasion of Belgium gave the French. Far from being a stable accommodation, such modification of title IX would simply set the stage for a later full-scale assault on the death penalty in the States.”