Number: RS21952
Title: The 9/11 Recommendations Implementation Act: An Abridged Comparison of the Criminal Law and Procedure Provisions of H.R. 10 and S. 2845 as Passed by Their Respective Houses
Authors: Charles Doyle, American Law Division 
Abstract: This report is a description of the substantive criminal law and procedures provisions of the House-passed version of H.R. 10. They have no equal in Senate-passed S. 2845. The provisions are largely devoted to increasing the penalties for various existing terrorist crimes and increasing the jurisdictional circumstances under which they may be prosecuted under federal law. The provisions include lone wolf FISA and grand jury information sharing amendments; increased penalties for hoaxes and obstructions of justice in terrorism cases, for identification offenses, and for smuggling aliens; clarification and expansion of terrorist support offenses, crimes involving weapons of mass destruction, and counterfeiting offenses. The provisions also increase the penalties and expand the jurisdictional reach of federal crimes barring the production, traffic in, and use as terrorist weapons of anti-aircraft missiles, atomic weapons, radiological dispersal devices, and smallpox virus. They merge the train wrecking and mass transit attacks proscriptions of existing law. They establish capital punishment as a permissible sanction for those existing federal terrorist crimes resulting in death that do not already carry the death penalty, deny federal benefits to terrorists, and make the 1994 death penalty procedures retroactively applicable to certain air piracy offenses committed after enactment of the 1974 capital punishment procedures. They establish a no-bail presumption for terrorists and subjects terrorists to post-imprisonment supervision for life.
Pages: 6
Date: October 13, 2004