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December 4, 2012
"The Victims' Rights Amendment: A Sympathetic, Clause-by-Clause Analysis"
The title of this post is the title of this new paper by Paul Cassell available via SSRN. Here is the abstract:My goal in this article is to provide a clause-by-clause analysis of the current version of the Victims’ Rights Amendment, explaining how it would operate in practice. In doing so, it is possible to draw upon an ever-expanding body of case law from the federal and state courts interpreting state victims’ enactments. The fact that these enactments have been put in place without significant interpretational issues in the criminal justice systems to which they apply suggests that a federal amendment could likewise be smoothly implemented.
Part II of this article briefly reviews the path leading up to the current version of the Victims’ Rights Amendment. Part III then reviews the version clause-by-clause, explaining how the provisions would operate in light of interpretations of similar language in the federal and state provisions. Part IV draws some brief conclusions about the project of enacting a federal constitutional amendment protecting crime victims’ rights.
December 4, 2012 at 10:19 AM | Permalink
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Comments
From Section I of the VRA:"The crime victim or the crime victim’s lawful representative has standing to fully assert and enforce these rights in any court."
There are no substantive victims' rights in this Trojan Horse for lawyer employment. Examples of a substantive victims'rights?
The ability to sue a prosecutor for failing to prosecute a clearly guilty defendant. The victim should be able to enjoin the prosecution to prosecute. If the judge deems the performance inadequate, the prosecutor must pay.
The victims of a vicious predators loosed by a soft on crime judge can sue him personally and his pro-criminal employers.
If a judge releases a vicious predator who victimizes others more than three times, he is automatically removed from the bench without a hearing, a three strikes law for the pro-criminal little Caesars, unaccountable to anyone but their political hack bosses.
I consider the falsely convicted innocent defendant to be a victim of the biggest criminal syndicate in history, the lawyer profession. Such crime victims should get full compensation.
If the verdict is innocent, and later evidence shows otherwise, the crime victim cannot have the defendant prosecuted again. However, the incompetent prosecutor, the biased judge, and the overly zealous defense lawyers, all should pay.
Finally, victims should able to sue the Supreme Court. For example, the 2000 murder victims of paranoid schiozophrenics a year and the 30,000 suicides a year are each and every single one the fault of the Supreme Court. They required a dangerous act and a heariong before these mental patients could be forced into treatment, treatment that would drop these rates of death by almost 90%. Over 35 years, 70000 people were murdered by mental patients and over a million people committed suicide thanks to the horrible decision of these unelected tyrants. If torts is not allowed, the families of these crime victims should be able to apply 50 lashes to the Justices with full legal immunity.
What we have instead are unconstitutional ex parte communication of feeling upset by being victimized. This serves to inflame, and is a trivial piece of information, and is not subject to cross examination. Everyone already knows it is upsetting to be a crime victim.
Posted by: Supremacy Claus | Dec 6, 2012 12:00:32 AM
