United States · Amendment · HAMDT

HAMDT 822 (101st)

An amendment to authorize capital punishment for ten additional federal offenses, including transporting explosives that results in death, murder by sending a bomb through the mail, death that results in the course of bank robbery, and murder by federal prisoners under life sentence. The amendment also tightens the bill's provisions on death penalty procedure by specifying that only one aggravating factor must be proved in order to impose the death penalty in place of the bill's requirement that two such factors be proved. The amendment heightens the burden of proof required to establish a mitigating factor from "any evidence" to "a preponderance of the evidence", and also revises the bill's standards for appellate review of death sentences by providing that if the appeals court upholds a finding of at least one aggravating factor it must uphold the sentence if it determines that the aggravating factor outweighs any mitigating factors. The amendment strikes provisions in the bill designed to allow prisoners under sentence of death to raise claims in federal habeas corpus proceedings that their sentence was imposed because of racial bias even though the claims were not raised in any previous habeas corpus petitions filed by the prisoner.