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			    GENERAL-RKBA Digest 310
Topics covered in this issue include:
  1) CRIMESTRIKE: MA House Joins Senate in Death Penalty Vote by NRA Alerts 
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Topic No. 1
Date: Wed, 5 Nov 1997 10:07:07 -0500 (EST)
From: NRA Alerts 
To: general-rkba-real.nra
Subject: CRIMESTRIKE: MA House Joins Senate in Death Penalty Vote
Message-ID: 
                        CrimeWatch Weekly
            Breaking news on critical crime-fighting 
                 issues, policies and legislation
 
Vol. 3, No. 44                                     November 4, 1997
                    Massachusetts House Joins
                   Senate In Death Penalty Vote
     The fury of public frustration over a series of brutal
murders boiled over last week as the Massachusetts House voted
81-79 to reinstate the death penalty.  The state Senate passed
such a bill Oct. 21.  
     The potency of the issue was underscored by House Speaker
Thomas Finneran's promise to appoint death-penalty supporters to
the House-Senate conference committee that will reconcile the two
versions.  Democrat Finneran opposes capital punishment.
     A Boston Herald poll published last week said  that 74% of
Bay State residents favor the measure.
     Though there have been other unusually cruel homicides, the
murder and rape of a 10-year-old Jeffrey Curley of Cambridge was
credited with propelling the measure through the House after
years of defeat. 
     Many legislators switched their votes in favor of the
measure during 12 hours of debate that preceded the final vote. 
Massachusetts' adoption of the death penalty will leave just 11
states without that penalty.  
     Legislators must now reconcile the Senate and House bills.
The Senate's has 12 qualifying crimes, while the House's creates
15 capital crimes, including domestic violence murders.  The
state's old death penalty law was thrown out by the Supreme
Judicial Court in 1984, though the state had last executed a
criminal back in 1947. 
                   BJS Study Suggests Congress 
                  Wisely Curtailed Inmate Suits
     
     A new federal study provides evidence that Congress acted
prudently in 1996 in passing two pieces of legislation intended
to reduce the staggering number of federal court lawsuits filed
annually by state and federal prison inmates.
     Prison inmate suits alone accounted for about 25% of all
federal court civil suits filed in 1996, the study from the
Bureau of Justice Statistics reveals.
     Congress, urged on by the nation's state attorneys general
and others concerned about the costs of defending against all of
those suits, toughened the standards governing such filing with
passage of the Prison Litigation Reform Act and Antiterrorism and
Effective Death Penalty Act in 1996.
     Overall, inmates filed 68,235  federal court suits in 1996,
up from 23,230 in 1980, the new study found. Ironically, while
suits tripled, BJS says the number per 1,000 inmates has actually
declined as the prison population grew from 319,598 to 1,128,274
over those 17 years.
     Demonstrating the popular belief that many inmate suits are 
frivolous or without merit, district courts ruled in favor of
inmates in fewer than 2% of their petitions in 1995, BJS says. 
The appeals courts upheld the lower court rulings against inmates
in 94% of cases that year.
     In addition to the district court filings, inmates brought
another 16,992 petitions in federal appeals courts in 1996 alone,
BJS said in its report, "Prisoner Petitions in the Federal
Courts, 1980-96."  State court suits weren't included.
                  CrimeStrike's Web Site Honored
     
     NRA CrimeStrike's site on the National Rifle Association's
Web page at http://www/nra.org was named "Justice Site of the
Month" for September by JUSTICE  FOR ALL, a criminal justice
reform organization based in Houston, Tex.  JUSTICE FOR ALL's web
address is http://www2.jfa.net/jfa/.
                   Release Of Parole Violators
                     Causes Flap In Louisiana
     A decision by a three-member Louisiana Parole Board panel
not to revoke the parole for 11 of 24 parole violators at a
hearing in St. Gabriel has rankled some parole officers and at
least one victims' rights advocate, Associated Press reports.
     "They are turning loose dangerous criminals who have already
been given a chance on parole and violated it," declared Sanford
Krasnoff, who heads Victims and Citizens Against Crime.  He
called the release "a mass jailbreak."
     "We're the ones who make the judgements," Parole Board
Chairman Fred Clark told the media.  He would not discuss
individual cases, but said  "Sometimes we follow their (parole
officers') recommendations, and sometimes we don't."  
     "What's the point of us revoking a guy if (the parole board)
is going to reverse us half the time?" a parole official who
requested anonymity  told the New Orleans Times-Picayune. "These
guys did some pretty serious stuff."
                 11-Year-Old Charged With Murder
     Authorities in Pontiac, Mich., have now charged an 11-year-old 
as an adult in the Friday killing of an 18-year-old.  "He may
be 11 chronologically, but he's a menace to society," Prosecutor
James Halushka said.  
     That case may eclipse the recent conviction of a 12-year-old
Texas youth for murdering a man for his Social Security check. 
An Odessa judge sentenced him to 30 years confinement, the
sentence to be served in a youth facility until age 17, then in a
state prison.
=+=+=+=+
This information is provided as a service of the National Rifle
Association Institute for Legislative Action, Fairfax, VA.
This and other information on the Second Amendment and the NRA is
available at: http://WWW.NRA.Org
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End of GENERAL-RKBA Digest 310
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