Senator Arlen Specter (R-PA)
 Following is another of occasional profiles of members of Congress who are former state or local prosecutors.
“What’s the best job you ever had,” U.S. Senator Arlen Specter (R-PA) is asked. A member of what has been variously described as the world’s most exclusive club and the world’s greatest deliberative body would have been expected to reply: “The job I have.”
Not Specter. He says, “When people ask me that question, I say ‘Assistant DA—going into court and trying cases.’”
Specter, who served as assistant DA and DA of Philadelphia, as well as a counsel on the Warren Commission that investigated the assassination of President Kennedy, says his prosecutorial background has been “enormously helpful” in the Senate, where he’s in his fourth term and is a member of six committees, including Judiciary.
“It’s a tremendous feeling,” he recalls, “to walk into a courtroom (as an assistant DA) with a long list of cases. In a city like Philadelphia it was extremely challenging because there was no time to interview witnesses. In the federal courts, the U.S. attorneys have a limited number of cases and they can do it, but not an assistant DA in a big city. Also, later, as chief of the appeals division, the experience in arguing in the appellate courts was extremely instructive. I found that the appellate courts were interested only in the facts; they could make the law come out any way they wanted. One day I argued four cases in the state supreme court. I also argued many cases in the superior court. All that experience in arguing and stating my case was invaluable when I came to the Senate.”
Specter believes the most serious problem facing local prosecutors today is “adequacy of funding for themselves and for the entire criminal justice system, so that cases can be tried without having plea bargaining.” He says there are too many plea bargains because of the lack of resources, including courtrooms and prosecutors. “It defeats the fundamental purpose of the arrest and prosecution in a serious case,” he maintains, “providing, of course, that you get a conviction.”
At the top of his list of criminal justice issues facing Congress and the nation is confirmation of judges needed to fill a backlog of vacancies in the federal courts and defects in the correctional system. Of the latter, he says, “We mis-name the correctional system. Actually it’s warehousing, and I’ve always had the view that we could cut crime enormously, perhaps by as much as 50 percent, if we did two things: segregate the career criminals and give them life sentences, which in the federal system means at least 15 years; and provide realistic rehabilitation including literacy and job training for those serving shorter sentences. The absence of the latter has produced endless recidivism in this country, and that does not have to be.”
Of the criminal justice legislation he has introduced and seen enacted, he is most proud of the Armed Career Criminal Act, signed into law in 1984 and expanded in 1986. It carries a mandatory 15-year prison sentence for a career criminal found carrying a firearm.
Arlen Specter was born to immigrant parents in Wichita, Kansas, at the beginning of the Great Depression and he grew up in Russell, Kansas, the home of former Republican Majority Leader and 1996 GOP presidential nominee Bob Dole.
According to the Almanac of American Politics, “Specter’s prosecutorial skills were honed in the air force, where he served in the Office of Special Investigations for two years before graduating from the Yale Law School.”
Asked what in his prosecutorial experience has helped his career the most as a member of Congress,” Specter replies without hesitation: “Cross-examination, because a critical part of work in the Senate is to find the facts. I have a very simple formula, which I learned as an assistant DA in Philadelphia. One, ask a single question; two, listen to the answer; and three, follow up. Frankly, hardly anyone listens to answers in the Senate. I’ve seen a lot of my colleagues use up their entire five allotted minutes with a question.”
He adds:
“There’s a famous story in the Senate which I don’t think is apocryphal. A committee chairman and a cabinet secretary who was to testify before the chairman’s committee had the scenario all worked out. The secretary was given a list of questions that would be asked and he prepared his replies. At the hearing, the committee chairman inadvertently asked the second question first and secretary gave the answer to the first question. And they went right down the line from their prepared lists. The second question got the third answer; the third question got the fourth answer and so forth.
“And nobody knew the difference.”
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