House hearing on death penalty and habeas bills

Thanks to a link from CrimProf Blog, I just discovered that the US House Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, and Homeland Security yesterday held a legislative hearing entitled “Does an Accurate and Swift Death Penalty Deter Crime and Save Lives?”.  This legislative hearing concerned two bills introduced last week: HR 3060, the “Terrorist Death Penalty Enhancement Act of 2005” (available hereavailable here).  The first bill appears to make a number of modifications to the federal death penalty, and the second bill appears to make a number of modifications to the federal habeas corpus provisions of AEDPA.

A press advisory about the hearing from the office of Committee Chair Sensenbrenner is available here, and a webcast of the hearings along with links to the written testimony is available here.  The written testimony of Professor Bernard Harcourt, available here, begins with this ominous account of the habeas provisions of HR 3035:

I would like to focus my remarks today on H.R. 3035, the “Streamlined Procedures Act of 2005,” for the very simple reason that this proposed bill is radical. It seeks a radical cutting and slashing of our existing process of federal habeas corpus review of state convictions under the Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act reform package that Congress carefully crafted in 1996 (the “AEDPA”). This new bill would effectively gut federal habeas corpus review where states have imposed a sentence of death — in other words, in the most important habeas cases — as well as in non-capital cases.

Since these bills are news to me, I have no clear sense of their origins or prospects.  Readers with more information about these bills are encouraged to use the comments to report any pertinent news.