Historical Overview of Federal Victims' Rights Legislation and Its Implementation Gaps

Page 4 of 78 2007 Utah L. Rev. 861, *866 The Crime Victims' Rights Movement was also able to prod the federal system to recognize victims’ rights. In 1982, Congress passed the first federal victims’ rights legislation, the Victim and Witness Protection Act, which gave victims the right to make an impact statement at sentencing and provided expanded restitution. !4 Since then, Congress has passed several acts that further protected victims’ rights, including the Victims of Crime Act of 1984, '> the Victims’ Rights and Restitution Act of 1990, 1° the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994, !7 the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996, '® and the Victim Rights Clarification Act of 1997. !° Other federal statutes have been passed to deal with specialized victim situations, such as child victims and witnesses. 7° Among these, the Victims' Rights and Restitution Act of 1990 is worth briefly highlighting. This act purported to create a comprehensive list of victim's rights in the federal criminal justice process. The act commanded that "[a] crime victim has the n 21 following rights and then listed various rights in the process. Among the [*867] rights were the right to "be treated with fairness and with respect for the victims’ dignity and privacy," 7? to "be notified of court proceedings," 7 to "confer with [the] attorney for the Government in the case," 7+ and to attend court proceedings, even if called as a witness, unless the victim's testimony "would be materially affected" by hearing other testimony at trial. 75 The statute also directed the Justice Department to make its "best efforts" to ensure that victims received their rights. 7° Yet this act never successfully integrated victims into the federal criminal justice process and was generally regarded as something of a dead letter. Because Congress passed the CVRA in 2004 to remedy the problems with this law, it is worth briefly reviewing why it was largely unsuccessful. Curiously, the Victims’ Rights Act was codified in Title 42 of the United States Code - the title dealing with "Public Health and Welfare." As a result, the statute was generally unknown to federal judges and criminal law practitioners. Federal practitioners reflexively consult Title 18 for guidance on criminal law issues. More prosaically, federal criminal enactments are bound together in a single West publication - the Federal Criminal Code and Rules. This single publication is carried to court by prosecutors and defense attorneys and is on the desk of most federal judges. Because West Publishing never included the Victims’ Rights Act in this book, the statute was essentially unknown even to the most experienced judges and attorneys. The prime illustration of the ineffectiveness of the Victims’ Rights Act comes from the Oklahoma City bombing case, where victims were denied rights protected by statute in large part because the rights were not listed in the criminal rules. 77 Because of such problems with the statutory protection of victims' rights, victims advocates decided in 1995 the time was right to press for a federal constitutional amendment. They argued that the statutory protections could not sufficiently guarantee 4 Pub. L. No. 97-291, 96 Stat. 1248 (1982). > Pub. L. No. 98-473, 98 Stat. 2170 (1984). © Pub. L. No. 101-647, 104 Stat. 4826 (1990). 7 Pub. L. No. 103-322, 108 Stat. 1796 (1994). 8 Pub. L. No. 104-132, 110 Stat. 1214 (1996). ° Pub. L. No. 105-6, 171 Stat. 12 (1997). 20 See, e.g., /8 U.S.C. § 3509 (2006) (protecting rights of child victim-witnesses). 21 Pub. L. No. 101-647, § 502(b) (1996). 2 Id. § 502(b)(1). 3 Id. § 502(b)(3). 24 Id. § 502(b)(5). 25 Id. § 502(b)(4). 26 Id. § 502(a). 27 United States v. McVeigh, 157 F.3d 809, 814-815 (10th Cir. 1998). See generally Cassell, Barbarians at the Gates, supra note 6, at 515-22 (discussing this case in greater detail). DAVID SCHOEN HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_017639