The Standing Rules of the Senate are drafted to encourage vigorous public debate on our nation’s most important issues. Indeed, the U.S. Senate is often referred to as “the world’s greatest deliberative body.” The Rules allow any Senator to seek recognition from the Chair at any time and, absent a temporary agreement to the contrary, to speak without interruption so long as he or she wishes. Debating important questions before the Senate is one way a Senator can highlight an issue, advocate for a change in policy, or voice his or her opinion on pending legislation.
Senate debate occurs in public, and is televised on CSPAN and transcribed in the Congressional Record. For your convenience, I post transcripts of my Senate floor speeches on this site for your review. I hope you find them informative and useful. My web site also makes available information on my voting record and legislation that I have sponsored in the Senate.
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Sessions Speaks on the Defense Authorization Bill
Mr. SESSIONS . Mr. President, I thank Senator Leahy for his amendment and his interest in dealing with a difficulty that has impacted real life. Contractors should be held to account, and there is difficulty in gathering the evidence necessary in a prompt way in a time of conflict to effectively carry out prosecutions--I can see as a former Federal prosecutor--within the time of the statute of limitations. There is only one concern I have about it, and I will address that in a moment.
But, fundamentally, the Senator is correct. We have discussed this a good bit in the Judiciary Committee, where Senator Leahy is chairman. We did the Military Extraterritorial Jurisdiction Act that I sponsored and led the first one of those. We do have to be careful because it can have unintended consequences.
The trial of a marine in California for an act in Iraq that he was acquitted for just a few days ago resulted from the bill that we passed. I don't think any of us at the time thought that we were subjecting military persons to a civilian trial when we were dealing, we thought at the time, with defense contractors. We need to be careful as we deal with the issue. I know Senator Leahy agrees with that. For the most part, I understand and support what he is attempting to do.
The statute of limitations is an important principle of law. It is something as a Federal prosecutor, as attorney general of Alabama, I had to deal with on many occasions. My colleagues probably know that an individual who commits armed bank robbery, if he is not prosecuted within 5 years,
cannot be prosecuted. If a person commits arson, they can't be prosecuted. It is not from the time of discovery of the offense, it is from the commission of the offense because we are talking about criminal law. We have a great heritage of understanding the difficulties faced when we put somebody in jail based on old evidence that is somewhat difficult to deal with.
With regard to civil actions, we have a number of statutes of limitations that commence on discovery of the wrong, but for the most part, except for murder, certain crimes, I think for almost all crimes dealing with death and maybe one with child sexual abuse, there is a limited statute of limitations.
The statute of limitations on most crimes in the Federal court, even serious ones, is 5 years. I do believe during the debate that we extended the statute on S&L fraud to 8 years. The truth is, these savings and loans would go bankrupt 4 or 5 years after the crime was committed. Then it takes 2 or 3 years to investigate it. By then the statute had run, and you have, red-handed, defrauding the people, and you couldn't prosecute the case. I understand the difficulties we are dealing with here.
Mr. LEAHY. Will the Senator yield for a moment?
Mr. SESSIONS . Yes.
Mr. LEAHY. We also have the case that most jurisdictions are under a statute of limitations. If you have a crime within a jurisdiction, but then the person flees to escape prosecution, the statute does not run in that circumstance. While this is not on all fours, when you have a war situation where people are shooting each other, it is very difficult to go over and just gather the evidence.
The Senator is absolutely correct. The bank robbery that occurs, you know it occurred at that moment. Somebody came in, put a gun to the teller's face, and stole the money and left. The investigators immediately start investigating the crime. Because of the person's jurisdiction, you have to investigate the crime and arrest them within the 5 years. Here the difficulty is investigating the crime when many times it is hidden. The crime is hidden, using the savings and loan example. I am simply trying to do what we did in World War II and World War I--I don't recall whether we did it in Korea or not--in past wars. I have a reluctance to give any cover to those who defraud us. We have so many contractors over there who are putting their own lives on the line, playing by the rules, doing everything right. They should be commended for that. We have others who try to take advantage of this situation when others are putting their lives on the line and sometimes losing their lives. We ought to nail them. I think we ought to nail them very hard.
Mr. SESSIONS . I agree. That is why we have passed the Military Extraterritorial Jurisdiction Act, why
we have expanded it, under the leadership of the chairman. I supported making sure that contractors were fully covered from the original act based on a crime that came to my attention where a young person was sexually molested and the host country didn't want to prosecute it and they couldn't be tried and court-martialed because the person was a contractor, not a military person. We made that possible.
Since we are in a world in which some of these authorizations to use military force may be very long indeed, it is determined not by what we do so much as by the actions of the enemy; that is, if they continue to attack us, I think our authorization of military force will continue many years perhaps. If the conflict ends, it could be ended sooner. So we could be in a position, just as a matter of law, of limiting the amount we are exposing a contractor to of criminal prosecutions for something that happened many years before, when actually in the fog of war, sometimes it is more difficult to handle things correctly. It would be certainly more difficult to gather evidence, and it is more difficult to get witnesses here and that kind of thing.
My suggestion would be that we do as we did with the statute of limitations on S&L fraud but have some sort of definite end to it because some of these extended wartime efforts could go on for a number of years. I don't see as a matter of principle, not specific facts, why a contractor who commits fraud in the United States gets the protection of a 5-year statute, even if it is against the Department of Defense, but one in Iraq, in the chaos of war that even affects them--their ability to maintain discipline over their workers is sometimes more difficult, frankly--that they would be prosecuted with an unlimited statute of limitations. That is something we could discuss, and I ask the Senator to think about it. I don't take any fundamental objection to the work he is doing. It is fundamentally sound and good, and I support it.
I will say this, if I could: In Toussie v. United States, the Supreme Court held:
The purpose of a statute of limitations--
Which I want to say is available in all cases, for all kinds of crimes, except very few, such as murder--
The purpose of a statute of limitations is to limit exposure to criminal prosecution to a certain fixed period of time following the occurrence of those acts the legislature has decided to punish by criminal sanctions. Such a limitation is designed to protect individuals from having to defend themselves against charges when the basic facts may have become obscured by the passage of time and to minimize the danger of official punishment because of acts in the far-distant past. Such a time limit may also have the salutary effect of encouraging law enforcement officials promptly to investigate suspected criminal activity.
The Court has further held:
Passage of time, whether before or after arrest, may impair memories, cause evidence to be lost, deprive the defendant of witnesses, and otherwise interfere with his ability to defend himself. .....Possible prejudice is inherent in any delay, however short; it may also weaken the Government's case. .....Such a [statute of] limitation is designed to protect individuals from having to defend themselves against charges when the basic facts may have become obscured by the passage of time and to minimize the danger of official punishment because of acts in the far-distant past. Such a time limit may also have the salutary effect of encouraging [cases to be prosecuted promptly].
But I will say that is the only concern I have. I thank the Senator for raising this issue. It will definitely close a loophole.
I would note I had the honor last night to be on an airplane coming back from Alabama sitting by a young individual who served 2 years as a contractor in Iraq. He is going back for a third year. We talked about some of these things. I did not know this amendment was coming up. But he talked about that some of the people do not perform very well. Many of them are very hard working. Many of them are former military people who served with great distinction.
But in this time of war, some people do lose their discipline, and fraud is a matter of real risk. We do need to watch every penny, and we certainly do not need to have unscrupulous contractors billing the American people for work they do not perform, for making false claims to the Government. I think a statute of limitations probably needs to be extended in this case.
I thank the Chair and yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Michigan.
Mr. LEVIN. Mr. President, this is an important amendment that appropriately recognizes the United States is now engaged in combat operations in Iraq and Afghanistan without a formal declaration of war. The amendment takes the appropriate step of modifying the statute of limitations to cases in which the use of force has been authorized without a formal declaration of war.
I very much welcome--and I am sure Senator Leahy does as well--the support of the Senator from Alabama. I do not know of anybody else who wants to speak on this amendment. Unless the Senator from Alabama does, I will suggest then that we move on to the next amendment.
I understand there is going to be a unanimous consent request that may interrupt that flow, but before we get to that, if the Senator from Alabama knows of no other--first of all, let me ask the Senator whether he does know of any other speaker on the amendment.
Mr. SESSIONS . Mr. President, I am not aware of any.
Mr. LEVIN. Is the Senator willing to have this amendment voice voted at this time?
Mr. SESSIONS . I would like to discuss that a little more with Senator Leahy, and perhaps he will convince me that my suggestion is not wise, so I would object at this time.
Mr. LEVIN. All right. If we could get the yeas and nays on this amendment so we could move on.
Mr. President, I ask for the yeas and nays.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there a sufficient second?
There appears to be a sufficient second.
The yeas and nays were ordered.
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