House Approves Tough Measure to Fight Crime : Legislation: The bill would broaden the death penalty, curb Death Row appeals and sometimes allow the use of evidence seized without a warrant.

WASHINGTON —  Granting President Bush nearly all the tough crime-fighting measures he sought, the House on Tuesday approved a far-reaching bill that would significantly broaden the federal death penalty, curb Death Row appeals and loosen restrictions on the use of evidence.

The legislation, adopted on a 305-118 vote, also would authorize $1.3 billion for a variety of Democrat-sponsored crime prevention strategies, including a proposal by Rep. Robert K. Dornan (R-Garden Grove) for a “police corps” of college students to serve as police officers in exchange for free schooling.

The House measure and a version passed earlier by the Senate adhere closely to major elements of an anti-crime package pushed by Bush. But there are numerous differences in the two measures that will have to be worked out by a Senate-House conference committee. Expected to fall by the wayside is a Senate-approved ban on certain semi-automatic “assault weapons,” a proposal rejected by the House last week with Bush’s acquiescence.

On the other hand, the conferees are considered likely to embrace a five-day waiting period for gun purchases that would be replaced in several years by the installation of a computer system of instant background checks on prospective buyers.

That so-called Brady provision, named for former White House Press Secretary James S. Brady, was inserted into the Senate’s crime measure after the House had approved its own version. Brady was severely wounded in the assassination attempt on then-President Ronald Reagan in 1981, and he and his wife, Sarah, have campaigned hard for gun-control measures since then.

Bush has said that he would reluctantly accept the Brady provision if it were part of an omnibus crime measure that he liked. At this point, Congress seems ready to produce one after battling for nearly a decade over three politically tinged, controversial components:

--The death penalty, which has been inactive for a host of federal offenses since the Supreme Court ruled in 1972 that such constitutional safeguards as a separate sentencing trial were lacking.

--Habeas corpus appeals, which many Death Row inmates have used repeatedly to delay their executions for years.

--The “exclusionary rule,” a Supreme Court dictate that bars the use of illegally obtained evidence at a trial--many times on mere technicalities, critics say.

The Senate and House bills would reinstate the federal death penalty for such crimes as assassination of the President and would add a number of other offenses, such as drive-by shootings and large-scale drug trafficking, to bring the total to more than 50.

The Senate would allow the death penalty if a crime on the list were committed “intentionally or knowingly.” But a controversial House amendment backed by Bush would substantially lower the threshold to “reckless disregard for human life.”

The Senate and the House defeated efforts by liberals to bar execution of prisoners who demonstrate that their sentence was imposed because of racial discrimination. Proponents claimed that blacks are executed disproportionately to whites in many jurisdictions. Opponents countered that the proposal would effectively block all death sentences, including those under state law.

Meanwhile, the House took a softer tack than the Senate in cracking down on habeas corpus appeals--those based on claims that due process was violated--in state and federal capital cases.

The Senate had adopted a Bush-supported provision that would bar customary federal review of such appeals if state trials had been conducted “fully and fairly.”

The House narrowly rejected this approach, with critics such as Rep. Don Edwards (D-San Jose) protesting that it would effectively repeal a process that has been used in Great Britain and the United States for more than 750 years.

The House adopted, instead, a streamlining of habeas corpus appeals that proponents said would stop excessive use of the writ of habeas corpus while preserving an inmate’s right to avoid being put to death during review of possible mistakes in his trial.

On the exclusionary rule, Bush won a victory in the House with the adoption of an amendment that would carve out a broad exception to its application.

Under current law, evidence must be seized with a search warrant. But if the warrant is defective (if the address was mis-typed, for example), the evidence still can be used if police had acted in a “good faith” belief that they were complying with the Constitution’s prohibition against unreasonable searches and seizures.

Under the House provision sponsored by Rep. Henry J. Hyde (R-Ill.), even evidence seized without a warrant could be used under the “good faith” formula.

The Senate had refused to go that far, instead codifying a Supreme Court decision on “good faith” searches with flawed warrants.

Other differences in the two bills include a Senate “bill of rights” for police officers facing internal investigations and a House repeal of a Supreme Court decision that permits courtroom use of some “coerced confessions.”

The Police Corps program championed by Dornan was included by a vote of 369 to 51 in the House. The Senate’s version also calls for establishment of a police corps. Differences in the two pieces of legislation must be worked out by a House-Senate conference committee.

Modeled after the military’s Reserve Officers Training Corps, the corps would offer college scholarships of up to $10,000 a year to young men and women who agree to serve on local police departments for four years after graduation.

“It’s one of the most satisfying victories I’ve had in 13 years in Congress,” said Dornan, who sponsored the bipartisan police corps amendment along with House Majority Leader Richard A. Gephardt (D-Mo.), House Minority Leader Robert H. Michel (R-Ill.) and Rep. Dave McCurdy (D-Okla.).

Sponsors say its purpose is to increase the number of officers on the streets, and to create a pool of college-educated “citizen-cops,” who do not necessarily intend to make law enforcement a lifelong career.

Such a police corps might have led to a different outcome in the highly publicized beating of Rodney King at the hands of Los Angeles police officers, Dornan said.

“If we had two or three police corps graduates among the young officers on the scene . . . with loyalty to a higher code of police work, I think it would have broken that code of silence” among officers, he said. “I don’t think the Rodney King beating would have taken place.”

Times staff writer Robert W. Stewart in Washington contributed to this report.