Will Criminals Receive Due Process If Marsy’s Law Passes?
Posted on September 26, 2008
Filed Under Criminal Law, Felonies, Law, Los Angeles, News, Process, misdemeanor |
Victims’ rights are a hot political issue in California this election. Proponents of California Proposition 9, also called Marsy’s Law and the Crime Victims’ Bill of Rights, say it will give crime victims the same rights as accused and convicted criminals (see our Sept. 24 post). But crime victims in California already have most of these rights. Most of measures listed in the Prop. 9 Crime Victims’ Bill of Rights were adopted into California law 26 years ago when voters approved a similar measure.
What Prop. 9 does is move these measures from statute to constitutional law. It’s an important difference and one that concerns many in the legal community. Statutes that don’t work correctly or are found to have unexpected and unintended consequences can be fairly easily changed by the passing of new laws. Changes to the constitution, however, can only be effected by a three-quarters vote of the state legislature or another ballot initiative, making it extremely difficult to correct errors or update the law.
Equally important is Prop. 9’s expansion of victims’ rights to the families of crime victims. Of particular concern is the impact this could have on sentencing and parole hearings. Prop. 9 would not only give victims’ families a voice in parole decisions but could decrease the frequency of hearings, overriding the rights of criminals. Critics fear that rather than “leveling the playing field,” Prop. 9 could result in vigilante law. By allowing emotional victims and families, rather than impartial jurists to define sentences, Prop. 9 could result in a gross miscarrying of justice, in effect denying both the accused and convicted criminals due process.
A Los Angeles Times editorial explained it this way: “The American legal system intentionally and properly distances families from prosecutions; the goal is evenhanded justice. The level of punishment a criminal receives should not depend on how persistent a particular family is in pleading for punishment or blocking parole. Civilized justice rejects vendetta and instead places retribution in the hands of the entire society. It may seem depersonalizing, but that’s a goal, not a defect, of our system.”
-LegalPro
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