S. I RIDES AGAIN

...They got their wish with the introduction of the current S. 1630...

...In addition, S. 1630 re-enacts the 1917 Espionage Act and the 1950 Mundt-Nixon Subversive Activities Control Act, the laws used to prosecute Daniel Ellsberg for releasing the Pentagon Papers...

...On October 7, Conyers introduced a liberal omnibus crime bill, H.R...

...Frank Wilkinson is optimistic...

...of Michigan opposed the bill...

...In 1978, the House Criminal Justice Subcommittee estimated that such an approach would result in a 63 per cent to 93 per cent increase in the Federal prison population...

...S. 1630 attempts to curb this chaos by centralizing all Federal crimes in Title 18 of the U.S...

...In Frank Wilkinson's view, however, the manifest need for code reorganization by no means justifies the unconstitutional practices which S. 1630 would sanctify if it were to become law...

...Commenting on Reagan's New Orleans address, Ira Glasser, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), said, "The President made no serious proposals that would have any effect on the crime rate, especially violent crime...

...The new system would eliminate parole and sharply limit the earning of "good time" (that is, early release) credits...

...The bill also empowers Federal courts to place news agencies in criminal contempt for disobeying a court order, even if the agencies reasonably believe the order contravenes the First Amendment...

...Such action may prompt the Supreme Court, which has chipped away at the Miranda rule in recent years, to abandon it altogether...

...While Kennedy offered to compromise on these points, Ronald Reagan's election convinced Thurmond and Hatch that the conservatives' cause would be better served by allowing S. 1722 to die and proposing a A public employe who blew the whistle on corruption could be arrested for speaking up new bill in the Ninety-seventh Congress...

...But even if S. 1630 is defeated, Reagan's anti-crime program may still triumph...

...The bill reenacts current laws under which reporters can be accused of "hindering law enforcement" for refusing to identify certain news sources...

...To appease Kennedy's liberal constituents, some of the repressive features of S. 1, such as that bill's retention of the Smith Act, were deleted from the new legislation...

...it is expected to serve as a rallying point in the drive to thwart the Senate bill...

...This sort of pressure was clearly evident during the Senate's debate on S. 1437...

...But before the measure could reach the Senate floor, its conservative backers, appreciative of the rightward drift in American politics, concluded the bill was too liberal...

...We're gonna win...

...After five years of research and hearings, the commission, chaired by former California Governor Pat Brown, submitted its draft of a new criminal code to President Nixon on January 7, 1971...

...The bill defines extortion as obtaining the "property of another...

...Such preventive detention conflicts with the Eighth Amendment and undermines the most fundamental principle of Anglo-American jurisprudence—that a person is innocent until proven guilty...

...The situation in the Senate clearly bodes ill for opponents of repressive legislation...

...by threatening or placing another in fear that any person will be subjected to bodily injury...

...For Kennedy, it was back to square one...

...By the time the Ninety-fifth Congress began in January 1977, the unholy union was born...

...Similarly, the members of the striking air controllers' union (PATCO) could be prosecuted for the felony offense of attempted extortion...

...Code, the Federal crime statutes are replete with inconsistencies, redundancies, and ludicrous anachronisms...

...With bipartisan support, S. 1437 raced through the Senate...

...Sentencing: S. 1630 would replace the present Federal practice of indeterminate Discussing a demonstration blocking Government would be a crime sentencing with a determinate system under which defendants would receive prison sentences of fixed length...

...As an accommodation to the McClellan camp, Kennedy promised to help process a separately introduced capital punishment bill...

...In 1966, Lyndon Johnson established the National Commission on Reform of Federal Criminal Laws to examine the desirability of statutory change...

...Since virtually all strikes for better wages and working conditions threaten employers with'eco-nomic loss or property damage, these provisions would severely jeopardize the rights of labor...

...Government Appeals of Sentences: Under current law, the Federal Government can appeal sentences only in cases involving defendants classified as "dangerous special offenders...

...Frank Wilkinson, who though formally retired remains NCARL's top gate attraction, went off on another of his famous speaking tours this fall, addressing trade unionists, civic groups, and religious organizations across the country...

...Indeed, his only public criticism so far of the Reagan approach to crime-fighting is that the Administration is not prepared to spend enough money...

...He basically is proposing to violate several constitutional rights as a way of reducing crime...

...Kennedy, though reduced to a junior partner now that the Senate is under Republican control, is still a strong supporter...

...At the time, Kennedy ranked third in seniority on the Judiciary Committee behind Chairman McClellan and James Eastland of Mississippi...

...Anti-Nuclear Activities: S. 1630 defines a new offense which targets anti-nuclear activists for special investigation and prosecution...

...Passed piecemeal by various Congresses over the decades, those laws have never been systematically organized...

...Labor Extortion and Labor Blackmail: In a low blow to the American working class, S. 1630 revises the 1937 Hobbs anti-racketeering act to render the Federal crime of extortion applicable to strikers, particularly those belonginjg to Federal employe unions...

...Why, then, the widespread support for S. 1630 among those who could reasonably be expected to oppose it...

...Code...

...In addition, President Reagan has placed his imprimatur upon the bill...

...Any property damage at a nuclear facility or any other energy-production or distribution plant could become a felony, punishable by five years in prison...

...Since it's far easier to pass a ten-page bill than one 400 pages long, our job will be harder than ever...

...Freedom of the Press: Like S. 1, the new bill threatens freedom of the press in a variety of ways...

...Although S. 1630 is easily the most repressive omnibus bill since S. 1 (its obscenity, contempt, and governmental obstruction provisions, for example, are broader than those in either S. 1437 or S. 1722), no liberal opposition has yet emerged in the Senate...

...Instead, he turned the matter over to Attorney General John Mitchell and the Justice Department, which replaced the Brown proposal with a bill of its own, introduced in the Senate on March 27, 1973...

...More importantly, present law also contains some seventy separate theft provisions and seventy-nine different terms to describe a criminal state of mind...

...Only five sessions of public hearings were held on the 682-page bill...

...Information Regarding Government Wrongdoing: Public employes who blow the whistle on official corruption or Government wrongdoing, and journalists who publish what the whistle-blowers have to say, could find themselves charged with the offense of "revealing private information submitted for a Government purpose...

...Conspiracy and Attempt: Planning and discussing certain activities, such as demonstrations that obstruct Government functions, could become crimes under an expanded definition of conspiracy and the new general attempt statute the bill creates...

...With Eastland approaching retirement and McClellan in poor health, Kennedy began to eye the chairmanship for himself...

...S.I RIDES AGAIN Another attempt to codify repression is pending in Congress-and this time it may succeed BY BILL BLUM Like Dracula rising from the crypt, the spirit of Senate Bill One, the Criminal Justice Reform Act of 1975, has reemerged in the current session of Congress...

...It contains something dreadful for virtually everyone, from the labor and peace movements to the press and anti-nuclear demonstrators...

...He is also a free-lance writer...

...After lengthy hearings before the Senate Judiciary Committee, the Nixon bill and one introduced by a dissenting member of the Brown Commission, Senator John Mc-Clellan of Arkansas, were consolidated...

...Picketing at induction centers or draft counseling could be held illegal and lead to five-year prison terms...

...The people will never allow the Bill of Rights to be destroyed," he insists...

...Representative James Mann, the South Carolina Democrat who then headed the subcommittee, declared that "Federal criminal law ought not to be the product of extensive horse-trading...

...To the rescue came Ted Kennedy...

...Apart from their political objections to S. 1630, opponents believe the legislation will do little if anything to lower the incidence of violence in America...

...Organizers want to generate the same kind of public outcry that stymied previous efforts at criminal code revision...

...Obscenity: Under a substantially broadened concept of obscenity, any dissemination of obscene material could become a felony...

...The new legislation, S. 1630, was introduced by Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman and South Carolina mossback Strom Thurmond on September 17...

...The new bill gives judges broad new discretion to deny bail and to imprison persons accused of any crime while they await trial...

...Judiciary hearings on S. 1630 began on September 28 and are expected to continue through the fall...

...The great-grandson of S. 1 is sponsored by an influential bipartisan team of lawmakers, including Republican Senators Thurmond, Orrin G. Hatch, Jeremiah Denton, Bob Dole, John P. East, Paul Lax-alt, Alan K. Simpson, and Arlen Specter, and Democrats Joseph R. Biden Jr., Dennis DeConcini, and the voice of liberalism himself, Edward M. Kennedy...

...In addition, the National Association of Manufacturers and the Busi-' ness Roundtable, both of which had closely analyzed the bill and sent representatives to testify at the hearings, complained—among other things—that the bill's definition of business fraud was too broad and its sentences and fines for white-collar crimes too high, and that the bill failed to insulate information given by business to the Government from public disclosure...

...They would also endow the FBI, never a friend of labor, with police jurisdiction over a wide range of strike activity...

...However, since the Brown draft expressed a strong concern for civil liberties, Nixon refused to transmit it to Congress...

...He called for a "sweeping revision" of the Federal criminal code to restore law and order...

...The only way to attack crime in America," Nixon declared, "is the way crime attacks our people—without pity...

...Among the bill's most repugnant provisions are the following: • Obstructing a Government Function by Physical Interference: S. 1630 would establish a new crime by making it an offense to interfere intentionally with a Federal officer performing his official duty...

...Nonetheless, NCARL is not about to give up...

...On January 15, 1975, the combined package was introduced in the Ninety-fourth Congress as S. 1. Although S. 1 ultimately died of public pressure without reaching the Senate floor, the search for a new code continued...

...A long-time proponent of criminal code reform, Kennedy maintained a dialog with the McClellan forces throughout the waning months of the Ninety-fourth Congress...

...The committee approved the bill in November and the entire Senate followed suit in January by a 72-to-15 vote...

...Confessions: The new bill incorporates currently inoperative Federal statutes designed to override the Miranda decision by rendering "voluntary" (that is, non-coerced) confessions admissible even if they are obtained without any warnings about the right against self-incrimination...

...The offense specifically covers cases where information has been furnished to the Government by private business...

...To understand why liberals like Ted Kennedy are in basic agreement with the current law-and-order approach, the effort to overhaul the Federal criminal laws must be considered in historical context...

...Scattered throughout the fifty titles of the U.S...

...Existing law, for example, prohibits interfering with the flight of Government carrier pigeons, piracy in the service of a foreign prince, writing a check for a debt of less than $1, and seducing a female passenger on a steamship...

...Opposition to War, Registration, and the Draft: The bill restates current law making it a felony during wartime to "physically interfere" with recruitment or induction or to "incite others" to evade military service...

...As Esther Herst, who replaced Wilkinson last year as NCARL's executive director, sees it, "Even if S. 1630 fails, we will still be confronted with separate bills on the death penalty, the exclusionary rule, preventive detention, and extortion...

...If the bill were law today, Wilkinson points out, the anti-nuclear protesters recently apprehended at Diablo Canyon for violating California's misdemeanor trespass statute could be arrested under Federal law and charged with felonies...

...On the surface, S. 1630 seems designed to do no more than streamline and modernize the Federal laws on crime...

...Special provisions included in the original act to exempt labor leaders from prosecution have been deleted from S: 1630...

...Although S. 1 and two subsequent efforts at criminal code reform in 1977 and 1979 failed to win Congressional approval, S. 1630's prospects of enactment are strong...

...S. 1630 also proposes a new blackmail statute which makes it a felony to come into possession of another's property through threats of economic loss...

...Under S. 1630, it will be authorized to appeal virtually any sentence it deems too lenient...

...Bill Blum is a Los Angeles lawyer specializing in criminal defense work...

...The real battle again promises to take place in the House, where John Conyers Jr., Michigan Democrat, now heads the Subcommittee on Criminal Justice...

...Preventive Detention: Today, people accused of Federal crimes have a constitutional right to reasonable bail...

...The inchoate crimes of conspiracy, solicitation, and attempt would also apply to this offense...

...Demonstrations which block Federal buildings or rallies held in violation of court orders would fall within the statute's broad reach...

...Leading a Riot: The infamous "Rap Brown Act," passed by Congress after the ghetto uprisings of 1968, is re-enacted: S. 1630 leaves intact provisions which were used to prosecute peace activists, Vietnam veterans, and Native Americans during the 1970s...

...From the standpoint of the Bill of Rights, S. 1630 is an unmitigated disaster and must be stopped," contends Frank Wilkinson, director emeritus of the National Committee Against Repressive Legislation (NCARL), the organization which led the public campaign to derail S. 1 in 1976...

...According to civil liberties activists, the new bill is every bit as lethal as its infamous ancestor...

...or that any property will be damaged...

...Among Senate liberals, only Democrats Alan Cranston of California and Donald W. Riegle Jr...

...The new system could push the United States past South Africa and the Soviet Union as the industrialized nation with the greatest per capita rate of incarceration...

...4711, free of the repressive features of its Senate counterpart...

...Although it stands little chance of passage, the Conyers bill constitutes a genuine alternative to S. 1630...

...Teaming this time with Strom Thurmond, who had replaced the now-deceased McClellan as co-captain of the reform effort, Kennedy introduced S. 1722, which differed only slightly from its predecessor and was quickly approved by the Committee...

...In addition, NCARL plans to organize a mass letter-writing campaign to persuade legislators to vote against S. 1630 and other Reagan crime bills...

...The ACLU was permitted just five minutes of testimony before one Judiciary Committee member, Strom Thurmond...

...Fortunately, S. 1437 met with a different fate in the House...

...Obstructing a Proceeding by Disorderly Conduct: S. 1630 expands current law by outlawing impairment of any official proceeding by noisy, violent, or tumultuous conduct or by "similarly disruptive means...

...When closely scrutinized, S. 1630 can be seen for what it really is: a prescription for political repression in the 1980s," Wilkinson contends...

...Solicitation: Under this entirely new Federal offense, a person could be convicted of a felony for encouraging someone else to engage in conduct he or she erroneously believed was constitutionally protected...

...NCARL's efforts will probably be supplemented by the ACLU and others in the legal community and the labor, environmental, and peace movements...

...Simply lending a friend or neighbor a magazine or book judged to be obscene could result in a two-year prison term...

...Thurmond and Utah's Orrin Hatch demanded more than forty substantive amendments, ranging from restoration of the Smith Act to the creation of harsher laws and penalties for pornography and prostitution...

...Under S. 1630, they would not...

...Political activity at any Federal, Congressional, or judicial function could become a misdemeanor...

...On May 2,1977, Kennedy and McClellan jointly introduced S. l's successor, S. 1437...

...Passage by the full body thereafter is virtually assured...

...When he succeeded to the Judiciary chairmanship in January 1979, his prestige was on the line...

...Speaking in New Orleans on September 28 before the convention of the International Association of Chiefs of Police, Reagan blamed the nation's high crime rate on a soft criminal justice system based on "Utopian presumptions about human nature...

...To improve his chances of success, Kennedy curried favor with the judiciary conservatives...

...For instance, it would reduce the number of theft offenses to eight and the number of recognizable criminal mental states to four...

...However, changes in the Senate seniority rules in 1975 required him to win election to the post...

...Under intense lobbying by civil liberties groups, the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Criminal Justice rejected the omnibus approach to reform of the criminal laws in favor of an incremental method aimed at repealing outmoded statutes and making substantive changes on a step-by-step basis...