S.1 Must Be Stopped

SENATE BILL NUMBER ONE, like a wolf in sheep's clothing, lies innocently right now in the friendly lair of the Senate Judiciary Committee. It seems harmless enough--a much needed bill to "codify, revise and reform" the federal criminal laws. But this 735-page tome, once sprung on the American public, will do more to keep the people ignorant about what the government is doing than to seriously coordinate the confusing list of federal statutes.

The bill's repressive nature is understandable in light of its evolution. What started off as a determined attempt by President Johnson to reform the criminal codes has become the legacy of the law and order policies of the bill's author, former Attorney General John N. Mitchell.

It is only in that context that the anti-civil libertarian features of S.1 can be understood. A list of a few provisions of the bill will make it clear exactly what type of threat S.1 poses.

In an attempt to substitute government secrecy for the first amendment, S.1 would criminalize the disclosure of classified information and broaden the definition of espionage. A series of official secrets provisions makes disclosure of national defense information to unauthorized persons punishable by a 30-year prison term. Anyone who has unauthorized possession of national defense information must return that information to the government or face a seven-year prison sentence. Had these provisions been enacted several years ago, the editors of the New York Times, Boston Globe and Washington Post or any other papers that printed the Pentagon Papers would have been jailed.

The bill makes physical interference with "federal government functions" a felony. Virtually any kind of civil rights or peace demonstration could at any moment by prohibited under this provision. Similarly, a vague redefinition of sabotage as anything that interferes with public transit could have jailed thousands of anti-Vietnam war demonstrators.

S.1 authorizes warrantless domestic security wiretaps on short notices. It also permits conviction of defendants for committing crimes that they were induced to commit by police pressures or entrapment.

The bill allows a public servant to defend himself in court on the basis that his illegal conduct "was required or authorized by law to carry out the defendant's authority." This provision would have allowed the Watergate conspirators to claim they were just following orders. S.1 would let them out of jail. And in what may become the government's most effective weapon to keep the public uninformed, the bill would allow a bureaucrat at almost any level of government to classify material only vaguely related to national security.

Perhaps the most dangerous provisions of the bill are the clauses that are directed at reversing the current trend of criminal sentencing. Besides making the death penalty mandatory for sabotage, espionage, treason and various categories of murder, the bill also provides for high maximum penalties, giving the judge greater discretion in criminal sentencing. By making sentences indeterminate for felonies, the bill allows judges to hand down terms of anywhere between one year and life for certain crimes. Some judges are predisposed to make rulings based in part on race, poverty, or even appearance. The indeterminate sentence provisions is a step backward in criminal justice and a regression from the consensus that judges should have less, not more, discretion.

WITH SIX of its eleven original sponsors in the Senate Judiciary Committee, S.1 stands a fairly good chance of being reported out of committee with just a few amendments. Some senators, like Birch Bayh (D-Ind.) an original sponsor who has withdrawn support for the bill in its current form, say that with a few amendments the bill could be a good one. But it is probably closer to the truth to estimate, as does the American Civil Liberties Union, that only after about 2600 amendments would S.1 be palatable. Once the bill hits the Senate floor, the tedious legal process and the sheer size of S.1 will prevent more than ten amendments from being adopted. By then everyone will be weary and the bill will be put up to a vote.

Hopefully at that time the Senate will recognize the bill's incorrigible nature and vote to scrap it in its entirety and draft another. So far, however, only a few newspaper editors and civil liberties agencies have expressed outrage at the bill, but the general public has applied little pressure against the bill. It is impossible to predict just what will happen once the bill gets on the floor. But, there is a good chance that the bill's supporters will insist that some of the repressive measures of S.1 find their way into whatever crime bill the Congress eventually, approves. Art Buchwald may have been right. When asked whether Congress will vote for S.1, he replied, "Why not? If they were dumb enough to propose it, they're dumb enough to pass it."