It's spring, but Congress already has November on its mind. After the May recess, there will be only a short span of time before both parties hold their national conventions in August. Following the conventions, Congress will need to quickly consider and hopefully pass some of the 13 appropriations bills before the end of the fiscal year on October 1. As the presidential campaigns go into high gear, pressure will be on Congress to adjourn quickly. All things considered, there is little time left on the legislative calendar. Meanwhile, progress has stalled on many of the bills of interest to the Judiciary.

S. 2329, the Scott Campbell, Stephanie Roper, Wendy Preston, Lourana Gillis, and Nila Lynn Crime Victims' Rights Act was passed by a vote of 96 to 1 in the Senate. The bill now moves to the House for consideration. S. 2329 is similar in substance to S.J. Res. 1, theConstitutional Rights for Victims Bill, that proposes an amendment to the Constitution to protect victims rights. Both bills would give victims of violent crime the right to a notice of any public proceeding involving the crime and of any release or escape of the accused; the rights not to be excluded from such public proceeding and reasonably to be heard at public release, plea, sentencing, reprieve, and pardon proceedings; the right to adjudicative decisions that duly consider the victim's safety; the right to proceedings free from unreasonable delay; and just and timely claims to restitution from the offender.

In March 1997, the Judicial Conference strongly endorsed a statutory approach over adoption of a victims' rights constitutional amendment. Judge Emmet G. Sullivan (D.D.C.), a member of the Judicial Conference Committee on Criminal Law, and chair of the Committee's Legislative Subcommittee, testified before Congress in February 2000 on a similar proposed amendment.

"A statutory approach," said Sullivan, "would allow all participants in the federal criminal justice system to gain experience with the principles involved without taking the unusual step of amending our nation's fundamental legal charter, with its concomitant application to the various state systems."

S.153, Identity Theft Penalty Enhancement Act, would enhance penalties for aggravated identity theft, adding specified terms of imprisonment to the terms already imposed for the underlying felonies. The Senate-passed bill also would prohibit a court from placing any person convicted of such a violation on probation, reducing any sentence for the related felony to take into account the sentence imposed for such a violation, or providing for concurrent terms of imprisonment for a violation of the new Act and any other violation. A companion bill, H.R. 1731, was favorably reported by the House Judiciary Committee in May. The Judicial Conference has historically opposed mandatory minimum sentences.

S. 1735,  the Gang Prevention and Effective Deterrence Act of 2003, was introduced in October 2003. The bill would allow a significant increase in the prosecution of members of criminal street gangs, many of whom would be juveniles. There is no companion bill in the House. An amended version of the bill was favorably reported by the Senate Judiciary Committee in early May, 2004.

In a letter to committee chair, Senator Orrin Hatch (R-UT) who is also a bill sponsor, the Judicial Conference expressed its view that, "The federal criminal justice system has little experience and few resources to deal with more than the handful of juveniles that currently are in the federal system. The Judicial Conference has maintained a long-standing position that criminal prosecutions should be limited to those offenses that cannot or should not be prosecuted in state courts. At its September 1997 meeting, after similar legislation had been proposed by Congress, the Judicial Conference affirmed that this policy is particularly applicable to the prosecution of juveniles."

H.R. 1768, the Multidistrict Litigation Restoration Act of 2004, passed in the House by a vote of 418-0 and is now pending in the Senate Judiciary Committee.

In its Lexecon, Inc. V. Milberg Weiss Bershad Hynes & Lerach decision, the Supreme Court held that statutory authority did not exist for a district judge conducting pretrial proceedings to transfer a case to his or her district for a trial. H.R. 1768 would amend the statute to allow a judge with a transferred case to retain it for trial or to transfer it to another district.

The Judicial Conference wrote to Senator Orrin Hatch (R-UT), chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, expressing the Judiciary's strong support for H.R. 1768.

"As experience has shown," the letter said, "there is wisdom in permitting the judge who is familiar with the facts, and parties, and pretrial proceedings of a transferred case to retain the case for trial. Also, as with most federal civil actions, multidistrict litigation cases are typically resolved through settlement. Allowing the transferee judge to set a firm trial date promotes the resolution of these cases."