Marsy’s Law, or The Crime Victim’s Bill of Rights, was passed in California in 2008. Since then it, or something like it, has passed into law in 8 other states. However, Montana’s Supreme Court struck it down as unconstitutional. On April 7th, it’ll be on the ballot in my state, Wisconsin, so as a responsible citizen attempting to do his due diligence I thought I’d read up about it. And yet I can’t seem to find information on it that doesn’t seem emotionally or politically loaded.
Some of it makes sense:
-Listing the rights of the victim in person so they understand
-Informing the victim of trial dates pertaining to the crime
-Informing the victim of parole hearings
-Allowing the victim to demand to take the stand as a witness and be in the courtroom if they choose
The ACLU is against it, as well as the editorial boards for many newspapers (whatever that’s worth). Their main contention is:
They seem to being saying the law as written is just and changing it hurts the rights of the accused. But it doesn’t seem to take into account HOW the laws are twisted for the defense currently.
I think that it’s possible to make a law like this that’s just, and it’s possible to make a law like this that’s unjust, and which it is will depend on the exact law in question. The question before you is not whether California’s or Montana’s law is good or bad, but merely whether Wisconsin’s is.
I think the victim can be barred from the court and prevented from testifying. I believe victims have claimed they felt violated as defense attorneys went through personal information to form a defense.
If I was raped I’d be pissed I wasn’t allowed into court to have my say and the defense team was bringing up a previous bankruptcy as proof I was making it up and just looking for money.
We passed it last election, and the entire process was a little sketchy, they took it for granted that it was a “good law.” I don’t have any strong objections, except that it seems unnecessary cruft.
Not to ad hominem, but the guy behind it is no saint.
Disclaimer, I’m not a lawyer and haven’t fully studied the legislation so I may be totally off base.
Even without the law, the prosecution would be allowed to call the victim as a witness if they thought their evidence would help the prosecution. So presumably this is intended in cases where neither the prosecution nor the defense has any specific questions for the victim. So who is going to lead the examination? Or is the idea that the victim would be allowed to get up in front of the court and make whatever statement they wanted? In that case I would worry that they may make prejudicial statements that would be legitimately objected to and disallowed if they were brought up in regular witness examination.
Why are we using the term “victim”? Before the court has rendered a decision the two sides are “accuser” and “accused”, and to refer to one side as “victim” before a decision has been rendered poisons the well in my opinion.
That’s stretching the bounds of relevancy, but if it would make a difference to a jury, why shouldn’t the jury decide if you were making it up and looking for money? What if there was a case where someone was making it up and looking for money? Should an innocent guy have to do decades in prison so that a person doesn’t have to disclose their personal history?
If it was a civil suit for mere money, they could turn your life upside down, depose you, force you to answer all sorts of questions.
But, I agree with the ACLU on this one. The rights afforded to a criminal defendant are those against the state attempting to imprison him. Victims simply have no role to play in the process. This isn’t like some sort of Abrahamic Law where family members determine punishment. Should a guy who robs or rapes a person get a lighter sentence simply because his victim is more forgiving or get a harsher one because the victim is out for blood?
The crime he committed is the same and the penological goals of punishment are only fulfilled with objective goals.
Also, to be consistent, the law should change to get rid of “no drop” domestic violence policies. If the victim has rights, shouldn’t an abused spouse be permitted to have the state dismiss the charges against her abuser? Or is this proposal just a pick 3 from this box and 2 from that box to take away even more rights from criminal defendants?
Only if you have a compelling reason to think the crime never happened at all.
Otherwise there certainly is a victim. Whether or not the person is a victim of the accused’s actions is up to the legal system to decide.
This is at least in part a specious argument. If the state takes controversial/dubious actions (accepting a plea to a far lesser crime to keep the prosecutor’s calendar uncluttered or record unblemished, or granting early parole because the felon “found Jesus”, impressing devout members of the parole board) that arguably represents the state acting to the detriment of the victim.
As previously said, the specific nature of victims’ rights laws determines how reasonable/constitutional they are.
Isn’t that what the court is there for-to determine if a crime has been committed in the first place and, if so, what the accused role was in said crime? One may claim to be a victim and be wrong, correct?
There are some unintended consequences of an ill-written Marsy’s law. Such as police officers invoking it to hide their identities and the investigations into their shooting of suspects. Or cities suing mentally ill people for misusing 911.
A vast majority of states already have victim’s rights enshrined either in their constitutions or in legislation, so I really don’t see it as needed legislation. It strikes me much more as a very rich person’s personal crusade rather than a good idea. But I also don’t think it will necessarily have a negative effect on the due process a criminal defendant would receive. To me, it seems like a waste of time and energy.
I voted against it simply because the way it was stated was so obviously one sided and misleading that I didn’t trust it to be true.
It was basically, “do you agree that victims are mistreated in the system and bad guys are getting away with murder because they can hide behind loopholes?”
I mean…who would disagree with that on the face of it…its a misleading question.
Who is ever going to say that “child molesters aren’t bad people”?
Because I recognized it as a misleading question, I didn’t trust the people behind who wrote it and voted against it.
This confuses several different things. First, the victims have no right to a particular criminal punishment from the state for a wrong. Many states have different laws, some states punish certain crimes harshly, others leniently, and some states have no laws against things which would be serious felonies in other states. That is up to the democratic process.
Second, victims always complain that the criminal “pled down” and ascribe nefarious motives to everyone involved. The problem is that the victim is usually on his or her first rodeo in the criminal justice system and doesn’t understand it. It is set up and has the deck stacked against the defendant already by imposing a trial penalty for the top count. Everyone knows this and the law is set up for this pleas so that the system is not swamped with jury trials. Even with the plea, the defendant got exactly what everyone thought was the correct punishment (unless the defendant was really innocent and took it to trial and got a fair greater penalty than any other guilty person).
Finally, these laws are simply a poor fit for the criminal justice system. Victims are free to vote out incompetent or lazy prosecutors. They are free to elect governors who are tough on parole. They are free to vote for legislators who will enact mandatory minimum sentences and “no plea” laws for certain offenses.
But to inject a victim into a particular criminal trial is folly. You get inconsistent and ad hoc results and the criminal justice system suffers from a lack of basic fairness. Again, why should a person get a harsher punishment just because his victim is particularly out for revenge?
The sentence he serves should be based on legitimate goals such as deterrence, rehabilitation, retribution, and incapacitation. More importantly his sentence should be more or less the same as those who commit similar crimes and have similar criminal histories. Without this fairness, people lose respect for the system.