Vote Notes: H.R. 6691, Community Safety and Security Act of 2018

Today, the House voted on a bill H.R. 6691, which would redefine “crimes of violence” in federal law. This comes about because of the recent Supreme Court decision in Sessions v. Dimaya in which the Court held the current definition is unconstitutionally vague. As a result, the twice-convicted green card holder, James Dimaya, is allowed to stay in the country rather than being deported. It also means other alien offenders who commit violent crimes may fall through the cracks and not be deported. Accordingly, I voted for the bill, which passed 247 to 152.

My yes was not a simple yes, though. I, in fact, really struggled with this bill because while on the surface it would seem to be a simple remedy to what the Supreme Court has asked, it’s much more complex in its implications.

Let’s break that apart.

On the one hand, you can’t have due process without clarity. In fairness to the courts, the existing law was in their view inappropriately vague, and as a consequence, you had someone like James Dimaya fall through the cracks in falling out of the bounds of what most any thinking person would consider justice. This bill simply gave the court the clarity on the enumeration of crimes that they asked for.

On the other hand, though, from a process standpoint, this bill was atrocious. It was introduced only a week ago, and no hearings were held on it. This is insane. The means never justify the ends, and I think that the means on this particular bill were faulty, given the way in which this bill was advanced. The hearing process allows ideas to be better vetted, though I suspect the way this bill will be held up on the Senate side will eventually lead to that vetting.

It was also a problem from the standpoint of the continued federalization of crime issues. We have a federal penal system that is stretched past capacity, and part of what brings this about is the overcriminalization of a whole host of issues. This isn’t one, and there is a real nexus between immigration issues and federal policy...but in general, we have too many crime issues now being sent to the federal rather than state and local systems.

In final form, though, I thought the good outweighed the bad in this bill, given the court’s explicit call for clarity. The bill gives that. I think the Senate will be much more deliberate in its deliberations, and consequently in good conscience, I believe that this bill gets the ball moving on something that shouldn’t languish, given the injustice that was built into the James Dimaya case.

For those of you who want to learn more of the details of the Dimaya case itself, I have attached the following link that will give you more detail than you want….

https://www.lawfareblog.com/summary-supreme-court-decision-sessions-v-dimaya?fbclid=IwAR3epWCthIsAchZWHHlesY8R0hpT_UwTPlcaPKgjzr9IqcYk7LKig8vcYTY