Remarks at a White House
Briefing on Proposed Criminal Justice Reform Legislation
Well,
thank you all for coming by, and thank you for a warm
welcome. I'm delighted to see you and I want to make a few remarks this
afternoon on the matter of the law and our courts -- an area I know is of some
interest to you, and as you may have noticed, has been
in the news lately. Sometimes people ask me whether I ever weary of the
controversy that seems to surround so much of public life and especially this
job. Well, the truth is that more than anything else, the Presidency becomes a
source of satisfaction if you can look back and see a far distance travelled.
In
fact, I can recall very well those first few months in office when we were
faced with the worst economic mess since the Great Depression. And on the
international scene, in some ways, things were even worse. Anyway, what I
remember most is discovering that after spending a whole campaign talking about
the serious problems we faced, I got into office and found out I'd been guilty
of understatement. I felt a little like the Titanic passenger, John Jacob
Astor, who it is reported said when the ship hit the iceberg, ``Listen, I asked
for ice but this is ridiculous.'' [Laughter] But things did turn around; we
moved from a dead-in-the-water economy to a dynamic, growth-oriented,
job-creating expansion that will become the longest in peacetime history.
Internationally, we moved from danger and humiliation to new status; not only
as a nation of power, but a nation with a sense of right and purpose strong
enough to set the tides running again in the cause of freedom and democracy.
And
yet, for all the critical economic and international problems we faced, we
should not forget that back in the early days, we faced another crisis that was
just as grave, one that threatened the very stability and survival of our
society. And that crisis was: the crisis of crime. Now, I won't list the
statistics and recite the horror stories. I think we can all remember the crime
rates that steadily escalated, the fear and terror in
our streets and neighborhoods, and the undermining of public faith in our legal
system and our democratic institution.
In
my first year in office, I mentioned all of this in a speech to our nation's
police chiefs, and I pledged to them and to the Nation immediate action. We
organized a commission on violent crime that came up with serious reforms that
were widely enacted. We added prosecutors and Federal agents and moved forward
with a massive crackdown on drug trafficking. We singled out the syndicate for
extinction and began a war of abolition against the mob. And though it did take
3 years and though we were forced to remove some important provisions, we did
finally get the Comprehensive Crime Control Act of 1984; which was tough, new
crime legislation, passed by the Congress including new drug trafficking laws
and tougher sentencing procedures. And finally, we appointed judges who
understood that the first duty of any civilized society is to protect its
honest citizens from those who prey on their innocent fellow citizens.
I
want you to know we've had results. The number of convictions
and average sentences have increased dramatically. In the organized
crime area alone, convictions are more than five times what they were. I'm
proud to tell you, too, that this administration's judges have been shown to be
statistically far sterner with criminals than their predecessors. All of this
has added up. Only last week, the Department of Justice released a study
showing crime was down now for the fifth year in a row and was now at its
lowest point in 14 years.
Now,
some have tried to say that all this progress was the result of demographics, we simply had less people in the crime-prone
categories. Well, the truth is that the drop in crime cannot be explained by
demographics. Coincidence isn't necessarily cause.
Crime has sometimes risen with population growth and sometimes not. There's
nothing historically inevitable about it.
Between
1977 and 1981, for example, the numbers in the crime-prone age group dropped
slightly, but serious crime went up 22 percent. So, let me just point out
something that I think is too often overlooked here. The rise in crime was not
an unavoidable accident; it didn't just happen. It was the result of a liberal
social philosophy that endorsed and supported leniency in the courtroom, a
social philosophy that said that society, not the criminal, was to blame for
crime. And this leniency in the courtroom itself was the result of another
liberal phenomenon: judicial activism; judges who thought it was their right to
make the law, not just interpret it; judges who fashioned new rules that were a
catastrophe for law-abiding citizens, new rules that made it harder to convict
even the most hardened and obviously guilty criminals. I've just recently heard
of a case that took place that illustrates this type of thing. A man convicted
for a heinous crime of violence and then released out in the streets because he
was not brought before the commissioner within 24 hours of arrest. No, he was
brought before him in 24 hours and 12 minutes. So he's out on the street.
The
reason crime has declined is obvious to you and me. As I suggested back in
1981, the American people were fed up. They were tired of judicial systems that
were tough on law enforcement officials, but let criminals off easy. They
insisted that certain important truths be reasserted, certain -- well, that
there's a right and wrong; that individuals are responsible for their actions;
and that society has a right to protect itself and the potential victims of
crime from those who prey on the innocent.
And
now, thanks to the American people, and especially to those of you at the State
and local level here in this room, we have managed to reject that ugly past.
We're making
Let
me speak then to the Criminal Justice Reform Act of 1987 and the three reforms
that I am announcing today, these reforms that we were forced to remove from
our earlier crime package but which we will pursue now with renewed vigor. The
Two
drug enforcement officers in
Now,
the first reform I want to talk about today concerns that exclusionary rule. As
you know, the Supreme Court recently recognized that it makes no sense to apply
the exclusionary rule when a police officer believes in reasonably good faith
that he is acting under a valid warrant, even if the warrant is defective for some
reason. My proposal would codify the existing reasonable good faith exception
and expand it to warrantless searches and seizures.
It would also limit use of statutes to exclude evidence. Those are reasonable
and responsible changes, and I urge the Congress to act quickly. It'll make a
difference to those of you on the front line.
Now
secondly, you all know better than anyone that judicial activists have expanded
the Federal habeas corpus doctrine to such an extent that it interferes with
our primary defense against crime: the State criminal justice systems.
Originally meant to safeguard our liberties by preventing the government from
holding a person in custody without pressing criminal charges, the habeas
corpus doctrine is now misused by Federal courts to second guess valid State
criminal convictions. My proposal would reform this doctrine and prevent it
from being used as another tool to let guilty criminals off the hook.
And
finally, I think you all know how strongly the American people feel about
restoration of the death penalty. Currently, there are no adequate Federal
procedures on the death penalty, and so it cannot be used in cases where
Federal statutes provide for capital punishment. My proposal would establish
such adequate procedures so that the death penalty provisions already on the
books can be utilized in such cases as espionage, treason, and aggravated
murder.
Now
as I said, all of these reforms were included in our original crime bill. But,
we were forced to remove them to get any action at all out of a Congress that
locked our crime bill up in committee. While each of these reforms have been passed individually by the Senate in recent years,
the House Judiciary Committee has refused at every turn to present them to the
floor of the House for a vote. And that's why I urge a full and open debate in
the Congress on these critical reforms. I urge members on both sides of these
questions to come forward, as they're doing now on my nomination of Judge Bork,
to identify their positions and inform the American people on the kind of
representation they're receiving on the crime issue.
This
issue concerns these reforms as it concerns the Bork nomination. Because what
we really see here is two conflicting visions of
Today
I challenge all those who would oppose these important reforms and all those
who oppose the nomination of Judge Bork to reflect carefully and well on what
the American people want. I remind them again: The American people do not want
judges picked for special interests. They do not want to return to leniency in
the courtroom and unsafe streets. They want judges and laws that reflect common
sense attitudes about crime. The simple truth is: crime is far too common.
Lenient laws and lenient judges have been greatly to blame for it. It's time to
reinstate the death penalty, reform the exclusionary rule and modify habeas
corpus. And it's time to put on the bench men like Judge Robert Bork.
If
you think that I am a little steamed up about this, I am. I remember in my 8
years in
Note: The President
spoke at