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1 1 (November 18, 2020)

handle is hein.crs/govdcoy0001 and id is 1 raw text is: Research Serv Overview of Recent Anti-Lynching Proposals Updated November 18, 2020 This Legal Sidebar was initially published on June 29, 2020, but has been updated to reflect changes to the Justice in Policing Act. Following the death of George Floyd in police custody in May and the fatal February shooting ofAhmaud Arbery, interest has heightened in legislation that would criminalize lynching-often described as death or bodily injury caused by two or more individuals acting without legal authority. Anumber of states have enacted anti-lynching laws, as localized crimes like murder tend to be a subject of state, rather than federal law. Although the conduct criminalized under those state laws can implicate various federal laws such as 18 U.S.C. §§ 241, 242, there is no federal law expressly governing lynching notwithstanding decades of legislative proposals on that front. In June, Members introduced two police reform bills- the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act of 2020 (Justice in Policing Act) and the Just and Unifying Solutions To Invigorate Communities Everywhere Act of 2020 (JUSTICE Act)-both of which originally included substantively identical sections described as anti-lynching provisions. The anti-lynching provision was later removed from the version of the Justice in Policing Act that passed the House. Sections like the one contained in the JUSTICEAct and originally contained in the Justice in Policing Act build on earlier legislation from this and other Congresses. Indeed, these anti-lynching provisions were largely identical to the conduct proscribed in two previously-introduced standalone bills. One, the Justice for Victims of Lynching Act of 2019 (H.R. 3536, S. 488), passed the Senate on February 14, 2019. A nearly identical anti-lynching bill titled the Emmett Till Anti-Lynching Act (F.R. 35) passed the House on February 26, 2020. Similar attempts to enact federal anti-lynching laws did not achieve bicameral approval in the 115th Congress-a fate for approximately 200 anti-lynching proposals in the last century. For example, in 1918 Representative Leonidas Dyer of Missouri introduced an anti-lynching bill to remedy the refusal of states to prosecute the perpetrators of . .. lynchings under their own laws. Although Dyer's bill eventually passed the House of Representatives in 1922 ... it was ultimately blocked by filibuster in the Senate. Like the stand-alone House or Senate passed anti-lynching provisions from earlier in the 116th Congress, Title IV of the JUSTICEAct would create a new section of the federal criminal code entitled 'Lynching.' It would make it a federal crime to conspire[] with another person to violate one of the following four federal hate crimes statutes: Congressional Research Service https://crsreports.congress.gov LSB10504 CRS Legal Siebar Prepared forMemrbersand comm fteeosof Congress