Hurricane, The

Who has challenged this law? Who has said it is unconstitutional? Four former United States Attorneys General (two Republicans and two Democrats) sent a letter to President Clinton on December 8, 1995 - before the Bill became law - telling him that the Act violates the United States Constitution. The Bill became law anyway.

Senator Moynihan introduced a bill (on January 19, 1999) to repeal the offending portions of the Act. Nothing happened, and the Bill "died in committee."

In introducing his Bill, Senator Moynihan told the Senate:

In 1996 we enacted a statute which holds that constitutional protections do not exist unless they have been unreasonably violated, an idea that would have confounded the framers. Thus, we have introduced a virus that will surely spread throughout our system of laws.

Has the Senate ignored this Bill for a reason? Do Moynihan's arguments make sense? Have innocent people really been harmed by this law? The following are more of Moynihan's concerns:

Here we are trivializing this treasure [the right of habeas corpus], putting in jeopardy a tradition of protection of individual rights by Federal courts that goes back to our earliest foundation. And the virus will spread. Why are we in such a rush to amend our Constitution? Why do we tamper with provisions as profound to our traditions and liberty as habeas corpus?

The Federal courts do not complain. It may be that because we have enacted this, there will be some prisoners who are executed sooner than they otherwise would have been. You may take satisfaction in that or not, as you choose, but we have begun to weaken a tenet of justice at the very base of our liberties.  The virus will spread.

This is new. It is profoundly disturbing. It is terribly dangerous. If I may have the presumption to join in the judgment of four Attorneys General, Mr. Civiletti, Mr. Levi, Mr. Katzenbach, and Mr. Richardson...this matter is unconstitutional and should be repealed from law.

It is sometimes easy to disregard things like habeas corpus because most Americans are law-abiding citizens who will never find themselves in trouble with the law. It's easy to think the "criminals" have it coming. But as the great Russian novelist Fydor Dostoevsky (reprieved, at the last possible moment, from execution by firing squad) once said:

A society should be judged not by how it treats its outstanding citizens but by how it treats its criminals.

Newspaper articles criticizing the law, like those attached to Moynihan's Bill, have had little effect on anyone in Washington. Perhaps the release of "The Hurricane" (despite its many factual flaws) will remind us that if one wrongly convicted person spends years in prison for a crime not commited, that is one person too many.