The mother of Kobe Bryant’s alleged rape victim spoke publicly for the first time this week at a Colorado event marking national Crime Victims’ Rights Week. “Victims’ rights are about changing and rewriting laws to give victims equal protection under
The mother of Kobe Bryant’s alleged rape victim spoke publicly for the first time this week at a Colorado event marking national Crime Victims’ Rights Week. “Victims’ rights are about changing and rewriting laws to give victims equal protection under the law,” she said.
Last month, the mother sent a letter to the judge presiding over the trial of the Los Angeles Lakers star beseeching him to set a trial date — sooner rather later — so that her daughter can get her ordeal over with and move on with her life.
As it is, the mother informed the judge, her daughter’s life was in peril — in fact, she has been the target of at least one contract-murder scheme — and she has been forced to move from state to state to escape private investigators hired by Bryant, not to mention the ravenous news and entertainment media.
Against that backdrop, the U.S. Senate this week agreed to move forward legislation that would codify certain rights of crime victims, whose advocates complain — rightfully so — that the scales of justice are tilted decidedly in favor of the criminally accused.
The legislation would give crime victims the right to be “reasonably protected” from their accused offender; to be notified of any public proceeding involving the crime; and not to be excluded from any such proceeding.
It also establishes a victim’s right to be notified of any release or escape of their offender; to be heard at any public proceeding involving a release plea, sentencing, reprieve or pardon; to confer with the government prosecutor in the case; and to full and timely restitution from the convicted offender.
If those planks sound familiar, it’s because they have been included in a proposed constitutional amendment that Sens. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., and John Kyl, R-Ariz., have tried to get their fellow senators to pass since 1996.
Yet another effort to win passage of a Victims’ Rights Amendment failed to muster sufficient Senate support this week, so supporters settled for victims’ rights legislation.
And even a federal victims’ rights law — rather than a constitutional amendment — has drawn the fire of groups who place the legal interests of criminals above those of crime victims.
Like, of course, the American Civil Liberties Union. While the demise of the Victims’ Rights Amendment is “welcome news,” ACLU legislative analyst Terri Ann Schroeder told the Associated Press, the alternative to which the Senate compromised “is still problematic.”
By granting rights to those who have been raped or robbed or assaulted or murdered, Congress will “inject raw emotion into what should be as calm and rational a process as possible,” Schroeder lamented.
Like most opponents of victims’ rights laws, the ACLU analyst is guilty of fallacy. She suggests that giving crime victims standing under the law will somehow undermine the constitutional protections afforded the criminally accused.
But a federal victims’ rights law will not deny the criminally accused of their right to counsel, to due process, to a speedy trial, or to a jury of their peers. It will not deprive them of their protection against unreasonable search and seizure, against self-incrimination, against double jeopardy, or against excessive bail.
All the victims’ rights law would do is strike a slightly more equitable balance between the rights of the criminally accused — like Kobe Bryant — and crime victims.
Those who oppose legal codification of victims’ rights, who almost always profess to empathize with crime victims, argue that the nation’s founders would have set forth those rights in the Constitution if they deemed it necessary.
But Feinstein noted during previous Senate debate on victims’ rights that “In 1789, there were not 9 million victims of violent crime each year. In fact, victims of violent crime each year in this country now outnumber the country’s entire population when the Constitution was written.”
Indeed, not in their wildest imagination could the nation’s founders have foreseen just how lawless, how violent, this country would become. Otherwise, crime victims wouldn’t have been overlooked in the Bill of Rights.
The nation’s crime victims are worthy of a constitutional amendment setting forth their rights. A federal victims’ right law is the least they deserve.
Joseph Perkins is a columnist for The San Diego Union-Tribune and can be reached at Joseph.Perkins@UnionTrib.com.
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