Historical Overview of the Crime Victims' Rights Act and Failed Constitutional Amendment

2014] CRIME VICTIMS’ RIGHTS 65 amendments.'® Congress considered the amendment several times, but it never obtained the requisite two-thirds support in both houses to secure the Amendment’s approval.'” Critics quarreled not so much with the goals of the amendment but rather with the necessity of constitutionalizing such rights.7° B. THE CRIME VICTIMS’ RIGHTS ACT Unable to obtain the necessary supermajority to pass a federal constitutional amendment, in April 2004, crime victims’ nghts advocates decided to focus on federal legislation protecting crime victims. In exchange for backing off from their efforts to pass a constitutional amendment, crime victims’ advocates received near-universal congressional support for a “broad and encompassing” statutory victims’ bill of rights.”! Victims’ advocates sought to expand on the protections found in other previously-enacted victims’ rights statutes, including, notably, the Victims’ Rights and Restitution Act of 1990.77 That statute had also included a bill of rights for crime victims, yet because of limited enforcement mechanisms, crime victims had been unable to secure court protection of the rights listed in the statute.” The statute that Congress passed to solve these problems—the Crime Victims’ Rights Act of 2004—-gave victims “the right to participate in the 18 See Cassell, supra note 17, at 848-49. For the pros and cons of the amendment as originally introduced, compare Paul G. Cassell, Barbarians at the Gates? A Reply to the Critics of the Victims’ Rights Amendment, 1999 UTAH L. REv. 479 [hereinafter Cassell, Barbarians at the Gates?|, and Steven J. Twist, The Crime Victims’ Rights Amendment and Two Good and Perfect Things, 1999 UtaH L. REv. 369, with Robert P. Mosteller, The Unnecessary Victims’ Rights Amendment, 1999 UtaH L. Rev. 443. For a more recent discussion of a newer version of the amendment, see Paul G. Cassell, The Victims’ Rights Amendment: A Sympathetic, Clause-by-Clause Analysis, 5 PHOENIX L. REv. 301 (2012). 19 Hon. Jon Kyl et al., On the Wings of Their Angels: The Scott Campbell, Stephanie Roper, Wendy Preston, Louarna Gillis, and Nila Lynn Crime Victims’ Rights Act, 9 LEWIs & CLARK L. REV. 581, 588-91 (2005). 20 Proposed Constitutional Amendment to Protect Crime Victims, S.J. Res. 1: Hearing Before the S. Comm. on the Judiciary, 108th Cong. 128-29 (2003) (statement of Sen. Patrick Leahy), see also Steven J. Twist & Daniel Seiden, The Proposed Victims’ Rights Amendment: A Brief Point/Counterpoint, 5 PHOENIX L. REv. 341, 356, 378 (2012) (illustrating that the necessity dispute has endured to the present day). 21 150 Conc. REc. 7295 (2004) (statement of Sen. Dianne Feinstein), see also Ky] et al., supra note 19, at 591-93. 2 Victims’ Rights and Restitution Act of 1990, Pub. L. No. 101-647, 104 Stat. 4820 (codified as amended at 42 U.S.C. §§ 10601, 10606-07 (2006)). 3 See, e.g., United States v. McVeigh, 106 F.3d 325, 328 (10th Cir. 1997) (per curiam) (refusing to enforce a victim’s right to attend a trial), Cassell, Barbarians at the Gates?, supra note 18, at 515-22 (discussing McVeigh). HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_014044