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PATRIOT Act Extension Bill Would Also Expand Death Penalty Laws

March 21, 2011 - by Donny Shaw

Since the mid 90s, federal death penalty statutes have been slowly but steadily expanding to include more and more offenses within their reach. With the committee-amended PATRIOT Act reauthorization bill that’s headed for floor votes in the next few weeks, Congress appears ready to expand the death penalty once again. This time, they’re looking at applying the death penalty to people convicted of providing material support for acts of terrorism that result in deaths.

The language was added to the bill during the March 10 mark-up session as an amendment from Judiciary Committee member Sen. Chuck Grassley [R, IA] (pictured) over opposition from the committee’s chairman, Sen. Pat Leahy [D, VT]. Leahy said that he was not opposed to the amendment on principle, but that he believed it went too far beyond the scope of the underlying legislation. “This is a surveillance bill […] not a criminal code bill,” Leahy argued. Grassley was ultimately able to overcome Leahy’s opposition when Sen. Dianne Feinstein [D, CA] and Sen. Charles Schumer [D, NY] crossed the aisle to vote with the Republicans against a Leahy motion to table the amendment. Sen. Herbert Kohl [D, WI] abstained from voting. After the motion to table was rejected, the amendment was agreed to by a voice vote.

And so now in the PATRIOT Act extension bill, on the second-to-last page, is Grassley’s death penalty language:


(a) Participation in Nuclear and Weapons of Mass Destruction Threats to the United States-Section 832© of title 18, United States Code, is amended by inserting ‘punished by death if death results to any person from the offense, or’ after ‘shall be’.

(b) Missile Systems to Destroy Aircraft-Section 2332g©(3) of title 18, United States Code, is amended by inserting ‘punished by death or’ after ‘shall be’.

© Atomic Weapons- The last sentence of section 222 b. of the Atomic Energy Act of 1954 (42 U.S.C. 2272) is amended by inserting ‘death or’ before ‘imprisonment for life’ the last place it appears.

(d) Radiological Dispersal Devices-Section 2332h©(3) of title 18, United States Code, is amended by inserting ‘death or’ before ‘imprisonment for life’.

(e) Variola Virus-Section 175c©(3) of title 18, United States Code, is amended by inserting ‘death or’ before ‘imprisonment for life’.

As Grassley explains, the language would apply the death penalty to crimes “including participating in, or providing material support to, developing, using, or threatening to use a nuclear weapon; producing or using a missile to destroy an aircraft; using or threatening to use atomic weapons; using a dirty bomb, or radiological dispersal device; and producing or using a virus.”

Within the realm of the existing capital punishment laws, this is hardly a controversial expansion. Still, when we’re dealing with an area do the law as sensitive and contentious as the death penalty, you expect to have hearings and an extended debate to gather input from experts on all sides. Instead this has been dropped in a tangentially-related bill and will be overshadowed by the many more controversial provisions of PATRIOT Act surveillance laws.



  • winston 03/21/2011 2:18pm

    at first i thought this might be a bill that would infringe on our constitutional right of armed revolution but ultimatly its just common sense. i may not be comfortable with the patriot act but really u cant just let people give people nukes and get away scott free. i think just sending the seals at em is a better alternative but i guess that just makes to much sense so they have to give them a fair trial and all that jazz before we kill them.

  • Abaratarrr 03/21/2011 5:24pm

    I thought you could already get the death penalty for murder? didn’t think that the method used to murder had anything to do with it.

    This can not mean a bad guys can use a trebuchet to mow down a few hundred people then not have to worry about facing the death penalty, can it? Do they need to add to the bill that it is also illegal to put children through meat grinders and that people should not stab old people in their eye sockets with forks?

    Murder is already a death penalty offense no matter the method or the reason behind the murder.

  • Comm_reply
    jsimsnewchapter 03/22/2011 4:18am

    This isn’t about USING the weapons, but rather, SUPPLYING them. The word “participation” is actually legally pretty vague. It could be as removed as providing intelligence on the location of materials to make the device.

  • Comm_reply
    Abaratarrr 03/22/2011 10:26am

    so would that mean that the owner of the feed store that sold timithy McVeigh the fertilizer would now face the death penalty or the farmer that owned the cow that made the fertilizer sold by the feed store?

  • Comm_reply
    jsimsnewchapter 03/22/2011 11:38am

    If either of them provided the material with fore-knowledge of how he would use them, yes. This is also an extension of the punishment phase, rather than expanding culpability. This is more like security personnel who sells the access codes to a person’s house being as liable as the actual person who came in a shot them.

  • Comm_reply
    fakk2 03/24/2011 4:41pm

    Shouldn’t they already have received the death penalty in the timothy mcveigh situation? Also, it kinda makes sense security personnel would be as culpable, I mean, it’s not hard to imagine either no crime, or at least not the same exact crime, would’ve happened without their participation.

  • Comm_reply
    fakk2 03/24/2011 4:38pm

    haha, eye sockets with forks! FORKS!!! (I read too much JTHM when I was younger)

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