Bobby Scott: “these amendments eliminate section 302 from the bill. Section 302 is extremely problematic. First of all, it includes a…”

“these amendments eliminate section 302 from the bill. Section 302 is extremely problematic. First of all, it includes a death penalty that applies to unintentional deaths. That raises severe constitutional problems that you could be put to death for an unintentional act. We already have penalties for the death penalty for intentional acts. This would add unintentional acts. Over 100 people have been totally exonerated or otherwise released from death row due to erroneous death penalties, and one study showed that 68 of death penalties were overturned as illegal. That does not include the ones where mistakes were made for which the error was so- called ``harmless.'' Other studies have shown that death penalties have been discriminatory against minorities, either affecting the consideration, undue consideration of the race of the defendant or the race of the victim. We, a few years ago, passed the Innocence Protection Act, which provides for effective counsel and case development to be well-funded, but we have not fully funded that Innocence Protection Act, so until it is fully funded, we should not be passing more death penalties. In addition, section 302 includes mandatory minimums. Let us see what these mandatory minimums are for. Any felonious attack on someone under 18 years of age. That would include a schoolyard brawl which gets bad enough when they start throwing chairs at each other or something like that.…”