Court dismissals of pro se inmate victim‑rights lawsuits under the Crime Victims' Rights Act

2014] CRIME VICTIMS’ RIGHTS 79 serve as a basis for identifying a “crime victim’ as defined in the CVRA, the class of victims with statutory rights may well be broader.””'°’ Paletz and Skinner similarly provide scant support for the Department’s position. In Skinner, a prison inmate attempted to bring a pro se civil suit against another inmate for allegedly attacking him during incarceration.'°* In dismissing the suit in an unpublished decision, the district court recognized that the Government had expressly declined to bring charges against the other inmate and concluded that the CVRA did not create a “mechanism to bring an action against Defendant directly.”!” In Paletz, that same inmate brought a similar pro se claim against another inmate, the Federal Bureau of Prisons, the FBI, and the U.S. Attorney General.!'° In a parallel, unpublished decision, the district court dismissed the suit, noting that the CVRA is designed to give victims certain rights ‘Within the prosecutorial process against a criminal defendant.”!"! Because Skinner and Paletz involve (apparently frivolous) civil suits, they say nothing about the CVRA’s reach in criminal cases, and any language to that effect would be pure dicta. Moreover, the courts’ terse analysis in both cases does not contain any substantive discussion of whether CVRA rights apply in criminal cases before the filing of charges. Instead, the courts simply cited to language from a Second Circuit decision that stated that the CVRA does not give victims any rights against defendants until those defendants have been convicted'!’—a holding clearly limited to restitution, as many other CVRA rights clearly apply before conviction.''* Reviewing these two cases in an extended, published opinion, the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas noted that reading these two decisions as standing for the proposition that charges must be filed for CVRA rights to attach “appears inconsistent with the CVRA recognition of certain subsection (a) rights that apply during investigation, before any charging instrument is filed.”'!* As a result, OLC °T Td. at 326. °8 Skinner, 2006 WL 1677177, at *1-2. Td. at *2. 10 Searcy v. Paletz, No. 6:07-1389-GRA-WMC, 2007 WL 1875802, at *1-2 (D.S.C. June 27, 2007). "Td. at *2. '2 Td. (However, ‘the CVRA does not grant victims any rights against individuals who have not been convicted of a crime.”” (quoting In re W.R. Huff Asset Mgmt. Co., 409 F.3d 555, 564 (2d Cir. 2005))). '3 Of course, a defendant cannot be ordered to pay restitution as part of his sentence until he has been found guilty. See 18 U.S.C. § 3664 (2012) (describing sentencing procedures for ordering restitution). 14 United States v. BP Prods. N. Am. Inc., No. H-07-434, 2008 WL 501321, at *12 n.7 (S.D. Tex. Feb. 21, 2008). HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_014058