Hearing of the House Judiciary Committee - Opening Statement of Rep. Collins, Markup of H.R. 1986

Hearing

Mr. Chairman, I commend the gentleman from Texas, Mr. Ratcliffe, for introducing this important legislation.

H.R. 1986 fixes a technical, but important, error in the federal code. Current law makes it a crime for certain "restricted persons" to possess any biological agent or toxin listed as a "select agent" by the HHS Secretary. Several years ago, HHS re-formatted its regulations, which caused certain toxins -- including ricin -- to not be covered by the criminal code.

Mr. Chairman, we are now seeing the effects of this error. Since the citations in the current statute are off, individuals who would otherwise be guilty of a crime -- unregistered possession of ricin -- have been moving to dismiss cases and federal prosecutors have had to argue the problem is a scrivener's error, but several cases have been affected already -- including one in my district.

In United States v. Gibbs, in the Gainesville division of the Northern District of Georgia, the judge dismissed charges against a defendant for unregistered possession of ricin. In doing so, the court stated it is Congress' duty to fix problems it has created in federal law.

Mr. Chairman, that is why we are here today. I urge my colleagues to support this bill.

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