passing date in query in expression

I need to pass multiple items in my where statement in out search widget. I can pass several items as "AND" statements and the statement works like this...

Working...
<expressions>
<expression alias="CITY" textsearchlabel="Search by City 1 [ Example: Milliken ]:">loccity LIKE '%[value]%' AND SALEPRICE > 100000</expression>
</expressions>


However I can't figure out the syntax for passing in dates like the following example...

Not Working
<expressions>
<expression alias="CITY" textsearchlabel="Search by City 1 [ Example: Milliken ]:">loccity LIKE '%[value]%' AND SALE_DATE <= 2004-05-12 00:00:00 AND SALE_DATE >= 2001-12-21 00:00:00</expression>
</expressions>