The Crime Victims’ Rights Movement’s Past, Present, and Future (Part III – the Future)
This is the third and concluding post serializing my comprehensive law review article on the past, present, and future of the crime victims’ rights movement. Earlier I blogged about the movement’s past and present. In this post, I look to the future. The movement seems likely to push for—and achieve—additional measures for asserting and enforcing victims’ rights. And it is time for the movement to renew its advocacy for a federal constitutional amendment protecting victims’ rights.
Back in 1973, the U.S. Supreme Court stated in expansive dicta that “in American jurisprudence at least, a private citizen lacks a judicially cognizable interest in the prosecution or nonprosecution of another.” (Linda R.S v. Richard D., 410 U.S. 614.) Whatever the validity of that conclusion in 1973, more than a half-century later it is no longer correct. Even at the time, the Court’s conclusion ignored this country’s long history of private prosecution, with victims directing and even initiating criminal prosecutions. And in the last several decades, the crime victims’ rights movement has created specific victims’ interests in criminal prosecutions, with victims’ bills of rights and other enactments giving victims a clear right to participation.
Today the public demands that victims play an important role in criminal justice processes. This view was well described in a Justice Department report regarding victims’ rights: “When a person is harmed by a criminal act, the agencies that make up our criminal and juvenile justice systems have a moral and legal obligation to respond. It is their responsibility not only to seek swift justice for victims but to ease their suffering in a time of great need.”
Exactly how the criminal justice system should respond to crime victims and their suffering remains a work in progress, with differences evident from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. But the basic contours of these responses are similar—as captured in a “victim participation model” first described by law professor Douglas Beloof. Today, the criminal justice processes in the federal system and all fifty states extend rights to crime victims, although the enforcement of these rights varies. Generally speaking, for felony and other important criminal cases, crime victims can be heard at appropriate points in the process, most commonly at sentencing through victim impact statements. Victims also are generally entitled to notice of court proceedings and to be able to attend court proceedings. Victims are also frequently given the right to confer with prosecutors and can sometimes shape a prosecutor’s decision to file (or not file) criminal charges. Thus, victims now possess the right to participate in the criminal justice process.
These participatory rights are described in Beloof’s victim participation model, which helps to reveal the fallacy in equating the crime victims’ rights movement with crime control issues. No doubt, the movement’s critics can point to examples of victims’ advocates pressing for puni
Article from Reason.com
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