Victim Appearances at Sentencing Hearings Under the California Victim's Bill of Rights

• NCJ Number: 104915
• Author(s): E Villmoare; V V Neto
• Date Published: 1987
• Length: 86 pages
• Grant Number(s): 83-NI-AX-0007
• Sponsoring Agency: National Institute of Justice (NIJ); US Dept of Justice NIJ Pub
• Corporate Author: University of the Pacific
• Sale Source: National Institute of Justice/; NCJRS Photocopy Services
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America
• Note: National Institute of Justice Executive Summary

Annotation

California's Proposition 8, the Victim's Bill of Rights, gives victims of crime the right to appear and be heard at felony sentencing hearings (the right of allocution).

Abstract

McGeorge School of Law conducted a study of the implementation of this right by state and local agencies, the extent of use of the right by victims, and victims' knowledge of the reaction to the right. The project surveyed presiding judges, probations departments, district attorneys, and victim/witness programs on a statewide basis and interviewed a sample of felony victims. The major findings and conclusions include: 1) inadequate notification procedures are a major problem in the implementation of the allocution right with the result that less than half of the victims sampled were aware of the right; 2) less than three percent of the eligible victims appeared at sentencing hearings; 3) most victims interviewed regarded the right of allocution as important and indicated the need for more information and more support to help them exercise it; 4) victims wanted information about criminal proceedings as much as they desired the legal right to participate in cases; and 5) the majority of presiding judges and chief probation officers viewed allocution at sentencing as unnecessary while the majority of district attorneys viewed allocution at sentencing favorably and were more confident than judges that it affected sentencing. (Author abstract)