NCJ Number
167783
Journal
Prosecutor Volume: 31 Issue: 2 Dated: (March/April 1997) Pages: 12-14,31
Date Published
1997
Length
4 pages
Annotation
This article argues that the fair and sensitive treatment for victims and their families in criminal cases does not require amending the U.S. Constitution and that proposals to do so are unworkable and unwise.
Abstract
There is bipartisan support for a victims' rights amendment to the U.S. Constitution, stimulated by the political appeal of such an action. Based on the language of the amendment proposed in the Senate (S.J. Res.65) and the Clinton administration's likely proposal to the 105th Congress, it can be expected that the proposed amendment will seek to accord a constitutionally protected status in proceedings between the state and the accused to third parties, albeit sympathetic ones, and to guarantee to these parties certain specific rights in every case (at least every case involving a violent crime). Since it will apply to State as well as Federal courts, it will create a category of Federal rights that State courts must respect. Its impact will be felt most intensely by those over-burdened State and local courts and prosecutors who are responsible for 95 percent of the criminal prosecutions in the United States. Giving victims "rights" to freedom from unreasonable delay, to restitution, and to safety, as the current draft does, has implications impossible to predict. Further, the proposed amendment would move the Nation closer to systems in which prosecution of crime is a private matter, a model abandoned long ago according to jurisprudence. Attention to the needs and interests of victims and their families is appropriate and necessary. It is an entirely different matter, however, to write into the Constitution a list of "rights" that a category of interested citizens, whose status can itself depend upon an adjudication of the merits of the case, may enforce in criminal cases.