[House Hearing, 109 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
VICTIMS AND THE CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM: HOW TO PROTECT, COMPENSATE AND
VINDICATE THE INTERESTS OF VICTIMS
=======================================================================
HEARING
BEFORE THE
SUBCOMMITTEE ON CRIME, TERRORISM,
AND HOMELAND SECURITY
OF THE
COMMITTEE ON THE JUDICIARY
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED NINTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
__________
FEBRUARY 16, 2006
__________
Serial No. 109-87
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on the Judiciary
Available via the World Wide Web: http://judiciary.house.gov
_____
U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE
WASHINGTON: 2006
26-054 PDF
For Sale by the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing Office
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COMMITTEE ON THE JUDICIARY
F. JAMES SENSENBRENNER, Jr., Wisconsin, Chairman
HENRY J. HYDE, Illinois JOHN CONYERS, Jr., Michigan
HOWARD COBLE, North Carolina HOWARD L. BERMAN, California
LAMAR SMITH, Texas RICK BOUCHER, Virginia
ELTON GALLEGLY, California JERROLD NADLER, New York
BOB GOODLATTE, Virginia ROBERT C. SCOTT, Virginia
STEVE CHABOT, Ohio MELVIN L. WATT, North Carolina
DANIEL E. LUNGREN, California ZOE LOFGREN, California
WILLIAM L. JENKINS, Tennessee SHEILA JACKSON LEE, Texas
CHRIS CANNON, Utah MAXINE WATERS, California
SPENCER BACHUS, Alabama MARTIN T. MEEHAN, Massachusetts
BOB INGLIS, South Carolina WILLIAM D. DELAHUNT, Massachusetts
JOHN N. HOSTETTLER, Indiana ROBERT WEXLER, Florida
MARK GREEN, Wisconsin ANTHONY D. WEINER, New York
RIC KELLER, Florida ADAM B. SCHIFF, California
DARRELL ISSA, California LINDA T. SANCHEZ, California
JEFF FLAKE, Arizona CHRIS VAN HOLLEN, Maryland
MIKE PENCE, Indiana DEBBIE WASSERMAN SCHULTZ, Florida
J. RANDY FORBES, Virginia
STEVE KING, Iowa
TOM FEENEY, Florida
TRENT FRANKS, Arizona
LOUIE GOHMERT, Texas
Philip G. Kiko, General Counsel-Chief of Staff
Perry H. Apelbaum, Minority Chief Counsel
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Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, and Homeland Security
HOWARD COBLE, North Carolina, Chairman
DANIEL E. LUNGREN, California ROBERT C. SCOTT, Virginia
MARK GREEN, Wisconsin SHEILA JACKSON LEE, Texas
TOM FEENEY, Florida MAXINE WATERS, California
STEVE CHABOT, Ohio MARTIN T. MEEHAN, Massachusetts
RIC KELLER, Florida WILLIAM D. DELAHUNT, Massachusetts
JEFF FLAKE, Arizona ANTHONY D. WEINER, New York
MIKE PENCE, Indiana
J. RANDY FORBES, Virginia
LOUIE GOHMERT, Texas
Michael Volkov, Chief Counsel
David Brink, Counsel
Jason Cervenak, Full Committee Counsel
Bobby Vassar, Minority Counsel
C O N T E N T S
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FEBRUARY 16, 2006
OPENING STATEMENT
Page
The Honorable Howard Coble, a Representative in Congress from the
State of North Carolina, and Chairman, Subcommittee on Crime,
Terrorism, and Homeland Security............................... 1
The Honorable Robert C. Scott, a Representative in Congress from
the State of Virginia, and Ranking Member, Subcommittee on
Crime, Terrorism, and Homeland Security........................ 2
The Honorable Steve Chabot, a Representative in Congress from the
State of Ohio, and Member, Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism,
and Homeland Security.......................................... 3
WITNESSES
Ms. Collene Thompson Campbell, National Chair, Force 100
Oral Testimony................................................. 6
Prepared Statement............................................. 8
Ms. Mary Lou Leary, Executive Director, National Center for
Victims of Crime
Oral Testimony................................................. 11
Prepared Statement............................................. 12
Kathryn Coffman, M.D., Medical Director of Childhelp Children's
Center, St. Joseph's Hospital and Medical Center
Oral Testimony................................................. 14
Prepared Statement............................................. 17
Ms. Phyllis Turner Lawrence, Independent Consultant, Restorative
Justice and Victims Services
Oral Testimony................................................. 27
Prepared Statement............................................. 29
VICTIMS AND THE CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM: HOW TO PROTECT, COMPENSATE AND
VINDICATE THE INTERESTS OF VICTIMS
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THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 16, 2006
House of Representatives,
Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism,
and Homeland Security
Committee on the Judiciary,
Washington, DC.
The Subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:02 a.m., in
Room 2141, Rayburn House Office Building, the Honorable Howard
Coble (Chairman of the Subcommittee) presiding.
Mr. Coble. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. We welcome
you to this morning's hearing, which will examine how victims
fare in our criminal justice system.
Too often we focus on enhancing penalties and new
strategies to combat crime and seem to overlook the need to
ensure our criminal justice system best serves those it is
intended to protect. When someone has fallen prey to a criminal
act, they've been victimized. Victimization can be emotionally
and financially overwhelming and creates an obvious burden upon
society.
Although crime prevention reduces the incidence of
victimization, it does not ensure that victims are effectively
compensated. In a 1996 study, conducted by the National
Institute of Justice, the calculated loss per victim ranged
from $2.9 million for murder, $87,000 for rape and sexual
assault, $8,000 for robbery, $1,400 for burglary, and $370 for
larceny.
Some basic facts demonstrate the impact of the cost to
society. In 2004 there was an estimated over 23 million violent
and property crime victims aged 12 or older in the United
States. This includes an estimated 18.6 million property crimes
to persons and their households, and an estimated 5.2 million
violent crimes, which vary from simple assaults to the most
heinous criminal acts.
To translate these figures into practice terms for the
United States, consider the following: one person is murdered
every 32.5 seconds; one violent crime occurs every 6 seconds;
one rape or sexual assault occurs every 2.5 minutes; one child
is reported abused or neglected every 35 seconds; and one
violent crime is committed every 20 seconds.
The cost to society is staggering. In 2004 alone, State
compensation programs paid crime victims and their families
$426 million. This is nearly double the amount from 7 years
ago. Half of these payments were for medical expenses. 20
percent were for lost wages and support, and 10 percent for
funeral bills. Only 9 percent was allocated for mental health
services. The direct cost of child abuse and neglect is more
than $24 billion annually, and when adding indirect costs such
as mental health, lost productivity, and criminal behavior, the
figure rises to more than $94 billion a year. Law enforcement
costs are rising as well. Local police spending represented 30
percent of the Nation's total justice expenditures as State
corrections amounted for 23 percent. That's over half of our
justice expenditures.
We need to make sure that our criminal justice system
treats victims fairly and takes into account their rights to
justice and compensation. Don't forget victims include people
whose identities have been stolen, and elderly who frequently
are targeted by sophisticated scabbers on the Internet or in
the business world.
The complexities created by various crimes which pervade
our society demand that our criminal justice system is
flexible, efficient and focused on the victims' needs. And, of
course, we need to do all we can to reduce the victimization in
America. By deterring criminals from committing crimes and by
preventing criminals from committing crimes.
I look forward to hearing from the witnesses today, and am
furthermore interested in any legislative ideas that may be
forthcoming from these important witnesses who will give
testimony today.
I am now pleased to recognize my good friend, the
distinguished gentleman from Virginia and the Ranking Member of
the Subcommittee, Mr. Bobby Scott.
Mr. Scott. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want to express to
you my appreciation for your holding this hearing on how we can
protect, compensate and vindicate the interest of victims of
crime. I'm sure we can all agree that the best way to do this
is actually prevent crimes from happening in the first place.
I've been a long proponent of crime prevention programs
aimed at preventing crimes before the fact, and as a society,
we are ready to spend billions of dollars that it takes in the
criminal justice system after the crime has been committed, yet
when it comes to spending money on evidence-based approaches
which have been proven to prevent crime in the first place, or
prisoner development programs which significantly reduce
recidivism, we find that we either are totally missing in
action or very stingy when it comes time to spending those
monies.
As a result of these failings--our criminal justice system,
Federal, State and local are all failing us. As long as we
continue the choice that we're going to play politics rather
than actually reduce crime, the criminal justice system will
continue to fail us. What we constantly see around here is
ratcheting up more and more penalties, without any indication
of whether or not those penalties are designed to actually
reduce crime.
Mr. Chairman, we have a lot of people in jail today through
these policies, and one thing that we are noticing is that
about 700,000 of these prisoners will be released, most no
better prepared than they were to begin with to lead a law-
abiding life.
I appreciate your holding a hearing just this week on what
we can do to help these prisoners lead a law-abiding life so
that we don't have to have more victims asking us for
compensation because they were victimized. If we spend the
money and have the programs that are appropriate, many of these
can return to law-abiding life rather than a criminal life, but
we have to make sure that we make those investments.
While I'm all for doing what we can to limit crime
victimization, we also have to make sure that we do not limit
the rights of the accused. We already know that we have too
many people who are convicted for crimes they didn't commit.
DNA evidence has proven that people, even on death row are
there for crimes they didn't commit, and we don't want to limit
whatever rights they have.
But one of the things that we have seen in the past is when
we consider victims' rights legislation, if we consider
statutes rather than constitutional amendments, we don't have
to get into the debate of whether we're impinging on people's
constitutional rights. If it's not a constitutional amendment,
it's not implicated. And there's a lot we can do by statute.
We can have victims' compensation funds. Virginia has a
fund where it's almost like worker's compensation. If you're a
victim of crime, you can get your medical bills paid and some
lost wages. Maybe we need to have more funds.
We need to have more money for prosecutors. There is no way
that you can expect a prosecutor to be even polite if they have
a stack of files more than they can possibly process in 1 day.
They need lower caseloads so they can be, instead of being
abrupt and rude to victims, they can have some time to talk
with them and go through the process.
Victim coordinators, people who can go help the victims
through the criminal justice process, make the phone calls. If
something has been rescheduled, make the phone calls so that
the victim doesn't have to come all the way to court to find
out that the thing has been continued. Victim coordinators,
those are not that expensive compared to all of the money we
spend in the criminal justice system and can be extremely
helpful. And witness protection, to make sure that those
witnesses who come forward are protected by the police from the
perpetrators of the crime.
There's a lot we can do. Preventing the crimes from
happening in the first place, and making the investments in the
criminal justice system so that the victims are treated with
appropriate dignity.
So I look forward to the testimony by witnesses on how we
can actually accomplish this, and working with you, Mr.
Chairman, on how we can improve the criminal justice system for
those who have been victimized by crime to make sure they're
not victimized again.
Thank you.
Mr. Coble. Thank you, Mr. Scott.
It's customary for the Subcommittee to restrict opening
statements to the Chairman and to the Ranking Member, but the
distinguished gentleman from Ohio, who chairs the Constitution
Subcommittee, Mr. Chabot, has done tremendous work in this
area, and he has requested permission to make a brief opening
statement.
Mr. Chabot. I think the Chairman very much, and move to
strike the last word. I look forward to this hearing, and I
want to particularly thank you for holding this hearing, Mr.
Chairman. This, as you mentioned, has been an issue. How crime
victims are treated in the criminal justice system has been
something that's been a particular concern to us for quite some
time. I was the sponsor of a victims' rights constitutional
amendment back in the 106th Congress, the 107th Congress, the
108th Congress. Unfortunately, despite numerous hearings and
attempts by Senator Kyl and Senator Feinstein, and myself and
many others, we just didn't have the votes to pass a
constitutional amendment. It takes two-thirds in the House,
two-thirds in the Senate, and we just didn't have the votes to
do that.
While it became clear that passage of that amendment wasn't
possible, at least at that time, Senator Kyl and Senator
Feinstein worked in the Senate for a bill that would protect
crime victims' rights. That bill was passed nearly unanimously
in the Senate, and I was the sponsor of the bill here in the
House. Ultimately, the Crime Victims Rights Act was included as
title I of the Justice for All Act, which was signed into law
by President Bush on October 30 back in '04.
The Crime Victims Rights Act was the first Federal law to
truly provide crime victims with dignity and respect through an
established and enforceable set of rights. This ensures that
justice is reserved not only for the accused, but also to the
thousands of persons whose lives have been impacted by crime.
The Crime Victims Rights Act is a little over a year old now,
and we're starting to see its impact on the Federal court
system. For example, in January, the Ninth Circuit Court of
Appeals ruled that crime victims have an affirmative right to
speak and not just submit written statements at the sentencing
phase of a criminal case.
Also the Justice Department has recently promulgated rules
pursuant to the act to help ensure that victims' rights are
effectively addressed by Federal prosecutors. I expect that the
relevant Subcommittees of the House Judiciary Committee will
hold oversight hearings with regard to the implementation of
the Crime Victims Rights Act and its impact on the criminal
justice system.
However, the Crime Victims Rights Act is just part of the
story of how the criminal justice system affects crime victims.
For instance, just this week I had the opportunity to meet with
Nancy Ruhe--she's the Executive Director of the National
Organization of Parents of Murdered Children, and talked with
her about some of the concerns that they have and some of the
things to bring up at this hearing. This group happens to be
based in my district in Cincinnati, Ohio, and they field over
1,000 phone calls every week to assist the needs of families
who are experiencing the loss of a loved one.
In addition, in the greater Cincinnati area, there's a lady
named Deborah Culberson, who lost her daughter, Carrie, to a
terrible murder. The perpetrator is behind bars, but they've
not been able to locate or identify her daughter's remains
because the murderer refuses to disclose to authorities where
he hid the body. Part of the problem is a patchwork of State
laws that call for mandatory DNA testing of the unidentified
remains in some States, but not in others. Thus, as may have
been the situation in Carrie's case, if a murderer disposes of
a body in a State that doesn't have the mandatory DNA testing
law, the loved ones of that missing person may never be able to
find out where their loved one actually is.
Ms. Culberson has been very forceful and determined. She's
a very courageous and inspiring woman, and she's been pursing
this national DNA database to help identify missing loved ones,
and thereby, provide at least some closure to these families,
and I think her efforts have truly been amazing to watch, and
she's an inspiration to me and my staff as we've worked with
her in recent years.
I look forward to hearing from all the witnesses here today
about the ways that Congress and the States can better serve
the needs of crime victims, including Mrs. Culberson and others
like her. While no one would choose to be a victim of a crime,
we can choose how we will treat those victims once the crime
has occurred. And I'll continue to work with those in the crime
victims community to ensure that crime victims are treated in
the best manner possible by the criminal justice system.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for allowing me to speak, and
thank you, for the witnesses being here today.
Mr. Coble. I thank the gentleman from Ohio.
Ladies, it's the practice of the Subcommittee to swear in
all witnesses, so if you all would please stand and raise your
right hands.
[Witnesses sworn.]
Mr. Coble. Let the record show that each witness answered
in the affirmative. You may be seated.
We are pleased to welcome our panel with us, and Ms.
Campbell, the distinguished gentleman from California, Mr.
Lungren, had requested permission to introduce you to the panel
today, but I see he is belated, so I will do that in his
absence.
Ms. Campbell. Maybe it's better if he didn't. [Laughter.]
Mr. Coble. I didn't hear what you said, Ms. Campbell.
Mr. Chabot. Maybe it's better if he didn't.
Mr. Coble. Oh. Well, I am sure he would do a good job. But
our first witness is the Hon. Collene Thompson Campbell,
National Chair of Force 100, a victims rights grass roots
organization. Ms. Campbell was the first woman mayor of the
city of San Juan Capistrano, and was recently appointed by
Governor Schwarzenegger to the California POST Commission, that
is, Peace Officer Standards and Training, which she currently
chairs. She is also the founder of Memory of Victims
Everywhere, known as MOVE, an organization devoted to improving
the criminal justice system by teaching victims how to better
understand the law. Ms. Campbell has been honored for her fight
against crime by numerous top officials, including President
George H.W. Bush.
Our second witness is Ms. Mary Lou Leary, who is the
Executive Director of the National Center for Victims of Crime.
Prior to serving in this capacity, Ms. Leary was Senior Counsel
to the U.S. Attorney in the United States Attorney's Office for
the District of Columbia. She's held numerous positions at the
U.S. Department of Justice, including acting Assistant Attorney
General for the Office Of Justice Programs, and Deputy
Associate Attorney General. Ms. Leary has a B.A. degree from
Syracuse University, and an M.A. from Ohio State University,
and a J.D. from Northeastern University School of Law.
And as an aside, Ms. Leary and I share two mutual friends.
The first one is Mr. M.L. Carr, who is a former basketball star
for the Boston Celtics, who played his college basketball in my
district in North Carolina at Guilford College. And your
counsel, Jennifer, is also a very good friend, Ms. Leary. Good
to have you with us.
Our third witness is Dr. Kathryn Coffman, Medical Director
of Childhelp Children's Center at the St. Joseph's Hospital in
Phoenix, Arizona. In this capacity, Dr. Coffman evaluated
children in the Crimes Against Children Unit of the Phoenix
Police Department, who have been impacted by acts of crime and
neglect. Previously, she worked at a child abuse clinic at the
Children's Hospital in New Orleans. Dr. Coffman received an
undergraduate degree from the Northwestern University and an
M.D. from the University of Iowa.
Our final witness today is Ms. Phyllis Turner Lawrence,
Independent Consultant for the Restorative Justice and Victims
Services. Ms. Lawrence provides services to victims of crime as
a restorative justice practitioner, program coordinator and
trainer, sentencing advocate, and consultant to nonprofits and
Government agencies. Previously she worked as Special Projects
Coordinator for the National Organization for Victim
Assistance, known as NOVA. Currently she's an adjunct faculty
member at the George Mason University and the Virginia
Department of Juvenile Justice. Ms. Lawrence received both her
B.A. and J.D. degrees from the University of California.
Now, ladies, it is our custom, as we have told you
previously, to try to comply with the 5-minute rule. When you
see the amber light on the panel before you, that is your
warning that you have 1 minute remaining, and the ice on which
you are skating is becoming thin. Now, we're not going to keel
haul anybody if they violate the 5-minute rule, but when you
see the red light appear, if you would wrap that up, we would
be appreciative. We have examined your written testimony and we
will reexamine it. But in the interest of time we have other
meetings as well, if you could comply with the 5-minute rule we
would be appreciative.
Ms. Campbell, why don't you start us off? Ms. Campbell,
pull that mic to you and activate it if you will.
TESTIMONY OF COLLENE THOMPSON CAMPBELL,
NATIONAL CHAIR, FORCE 100
Ms. Campbell. Thank you. Mr. Chairman and Committee
Members, I am frequently asked, ``What are your credentials and
your degrees? What degrees do you have?''
Well, I have three degrees, gentlemen. In 1982 I received
my first degree. Sadly, it was the first degree murder of our
only son, Scott. I received two additional degrees in 1988.
Those were the first degree murders of my brother, auto racing
legend, Mickey Thompson, and his wife. I wish I didn't have
these degrees, but I do, and our goal is to avoid others from
obtaining these life-altering degrees.
It's obvious that it's near impossible, in only a few
words, to adequately describe a quarter of a century of our
living hell caused by both the killers and the justice system.
I think it is extremely important for you to try to comprehend
the real world of crime and victimization.
Our family's experience is not uncommon. Millions of
honest, hard-working Americans are forced to endure the never-
ending devastation caused by crime, which is expanded by our
justice system that is out of balance.
In order to be here today before you, I had to fly all
night last night. I haven't been to bed, and my husband and I
paid all costs for this trip. That alone should give you a tiny
indication of the importance we place on your actions.
Yesterday, in fact, just a few hours ago, we were in a
California court for the 54th time, hoping to get a trial date
for the 18-year-old murders of my brother and his wife. But we
didn't have a right for a speedy trial. Only the accused has
that right. So yesterday we got another delay, and there's no
end in sight. That's not only costly to our family, but it's
very costly to the taxpayers.
Just last week we sat across the table from the man who
murdered, and then watched as we searched for our son for 11
agonizing months. We were there at the parole hearing to simply
ask the Parole Board to enforce the truth-in-sentencing. It is
very difficult.
In our U.S. Constitution, an accused criminal has 23
rights, and the victim has none. That is unjust and causes our
system to be heavily weighted in favor of the criminal.
Mr. Chabot, thank you for what you have done in that area.
Thank you for your recognition.
For any family, to deal with murder is excruciating, and to
allow the American justice system to add additional agony is
shameful. We ask Congress to do what is right, and please
support the Office for Victims of Crime.
I believe my lovely granddaughter, Melissa, summed it up
best. She said, ``Mom, what would it be like to live in a
normal family?'' That about ripped my heart out because we've
tried so hard to make our family normal. I asked her what she
meant, and she says, ``Well, Mom, every time I ask you and Papa
if we can take a vacation together, your answer is always the
same. You always say, ``Well, Princess, we can't promise you
because we may have to be in court.'' So Melissa said, ``You
know, Mom, the murderer kills our family, then they control the
rest of our lives through manipulating the justice system. It's
just not fair.''
I think Melissa's words were pretty well said, and really
summed up what we lived through.
We're obviously disturbed that the President's budget
recommends taking the VOCA funds away from the victims, the
precise people the fund was designed to help. The Victims of
Crimes Act was introduced by President Reagan. The money is
generated from fines levied on the convicted criminals. This
fund is not taxpayers' money. It comes from the correct source,
from the criminals. Congress must reflect on not taking that
money. They must not take that money intended for victims, and
instead, raise the cap from $625 million to a billion dollars.
The criminals are housed, fed, educated, mentally cared for,
and given every opportunity to succeed with enormous funds
spent on their comfort and their welfare. There is something
greatly wrong with the philosophy that we take care of the
criminal, but the victim or their children, are ignored.
It seems the honest law-abiding person may be on the wrong
side of the bars. I can assure you that we and thousands of
other victims are the product of others before us doing
nothing. Hopefully, you will continue to move to take action to
better protect good, honest-working Americans.
On behalf of Force 100, representing crime victims from
every State in the Nation, thank you for allowing me to be
heard. God bless you, and God bless your work, and this great
Nation. And I will be happy to answer any and all questions.
Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Campbell follows:]
Prepared Statement of Collene Thompson Campbell
Mr. Chairman and Committee Members;
I'm frequently asked, ``What are your credentials to speak on
matters of victimology, and what degrees do you possess in this
regard?'' Well, I have three degrees. In April 1982 I received my first
degree. Regrettably, it was the first-degree murder of our only son,
Scott. I received two additional degrees on the 16th day of March 1988.
It was the first-degree murders of my only sibling, my brother, auto
racing legend, Mickey Thompson and his wife, Trudy. I have been in the
criminal justice system from 1982 until this day, that's twenty-four
straight, exhausting years. So there are ``degrees,'' and then there
are ``degrees,'' and I will leave it up to you to decide which are the
most significant in our fight for rights and to help gain standing in
the courts for the victims. I wish to God I could say I have no
credentials to address these issues.
In order to judge moral fiber and fortitude, it is important for
you, our Nation's decision makers, to recognize and make a strong
effort to identify with ``why'' we feel so strongly about victims and
the protection of our citizens. As horrifying as it may seem, for a
moment, please try to put yourself in my victim's shoes. It is
difficult in a few words to depict a quarter-of-a-century of a living
hell furnished first hand to my family by killers and expanded by our
justice system.
We are from a good, honest, hard working family. We never thought
we could become victims of horrible crimes. Our family is among the
millions of Americans who have been forced to endure the everlasting
devastation caused by criminals, and in addition, we are further
required to suffer added enormous stress caused by the inequities
within our justice system.
As you can plainly see, I'm certainly not a young woman, and yet, I
have done what is necessary to be here to speak before you this
morning. I have not been in a bed for more than thirty hours, and I'm
sure I ``look it!''
Just a week ago, my husband, Gary, and I sat across the table from
the man who murdered our only Son, asking the parole board to please
enforce ``truth in sentencing'' by keeping the convicted killer in
prison for the time the court had ordered. Then, yesterday, we again
spent the day in a Los Angeles County Superior Courtroom. However, this
court appearance was not about our Son's murder. This time we were in
court because of the murder of my brother and his wife, Mickey and
Trudy which seemed to be a continuation of what we have endured on a
regular basis for nearly twenty-five years straight!
After leaving the courtroom yesterday, I flew all night to stand
before you this morning. As with everything we do, my wonderful husband
of fifty-five-years financed the travel costs. That alone may give you
a tiny indication of the importance we place on the subject of crime
and the resulting victims. My motivation is to help avoid others from
living the life we have been forced to endure by crime and the justice
system. My reward will be for this Committee On Crime to respond with
positive action to help victims, like making certain the VOCA fund is
increased, not eliminated in the President's FY 2007 budget. The
additional devastation caused to victims of crime, by the system, could
and should be improved immediately.
The trial of our Son's murder case stretched out more than eight
years. The murder case of my Brother and his Wife, has now expanded to
eighteen years, and obviously, important witnesses are dying. That,
Committee Members, is a total of twenty-four straight years of our
family attempting to endure the impact of murder, coupled with a less
than balanced justice system. Plus, it must also be noted that these
delays are a huge liability to the taxpayer. Only the accused has a
right to a speedy trial, not the victim, nor the taxpayer. Victims do
not have rights in the Criminal Justice System.
The justice system continues to accommodate the killers, thereby
escalating the emotional pain to the families of horrible crimes. Evil
offenders murder our loved ones, then, all too often our system permits
them to generate absurd, untrue and hurtful accusations against the
victims, their families and law enforcement officers. The criminal
defendant frequently is allowed to generate painful unfairness,
prolonged trial delays and knowingly deceive the Court.
In our U.S. Constitution, an accused criminal has twenty-three
rights and the victim has not one single right. It is crucial that we
all work to improve the unfairness that is heavily weighted in favor of
the criminal.
Along with thousands of other good hard-working Americans who have
become victims of evil predators, our only son, Scott, is dead because
of a weak and forgiving criminal justice system. His killers both would
have been ``Three-Strikers'' under today's California law, and should
have been in prison. If they had been incarcerated our Son would be
alive today. There are many thousands just like us who have lost their
loved ones because a criminal was given that ``one more chance,'' which
is a huge and unforgivable ``price'' for a Mom and Dad.
We may be one of the hardest hit crime victim's families in the
Nation, but we are only one family out of hundreds of thousands who are
forced to endure huge inequities within the system, both State and
Federal.
Our son, Scott, became missing and we desperately searched for him
for eleven agonizing months before we learned the horrible truth. Scott
was kidnapped, assaulted, strangled and then thrown from an airplane
into the Pacific Ocean by two repeat felony criminals, his body was
never found.
My Brother, my only sibling, auto racing legend Mickey Thompson and
his wife, Trudy, were shot to death as they were simply leaving their
home on their way to work in the morning. It has now been eighteen-
years since their murders. We have traveled to, and been in the
courtroom fifty-four times and still do not have a trial date, due to
defense motions. There is no end in sight. For any family to deal with
murder is excruciating. However, to allow the American justice system
to add additional agony is both intolerable and shameful. Possibly if
victims had an organization such as the ACLU or the Trial Attorneys'
Associations our situation might improve. We have very few factions
representing victims and that is why it is so very important that you
step forward to help protect the honest, law abiding citizen who just
happens be become a victim of crime. Why are so many interested in
helping the perpetrators of crime and not the victims of the criminal's
evil actions? We ask the House to do what is right and support the
Office For Victims of Crime and its Director, John Gillis, who himself
has lived through the devastation of a gang member murdering his only
daughter, all because he was a Police Officer. The gang believed to
``murder the daughter of a policeman'' would escalate their gang
status, along with the actual gang killer.
We continue to be deeply saddened, and rightly so, by the 9/11
terrorists' attacks. During those four cowardly assaults, there were
2,752 innocent humans killed by terrorists on that heartbreaking day of
September 11, 2001. And as of today, unfortunately, in action, we have
also lost 1,776 great and courageous Americans in Iraq and Afghanistan
in the war to protect our Nation and bring peace to the world. However,
it is important to realize that during that same period of time, as our
Nation's attention is turned to war casualties and the 9/11 fatalities,
we have lost more than 70,000 American's right here in our own United
States, to MURDER. That is more than 15 times the number of people
that were killed on both 9/11 AND in the war in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Fifteen times greater and I am only talking about murder . . . and not
including all the other vicious and violent crimes like rape,
molestation and robbery. That certainly indicates, we must also focus
on what is happening here, in our Country. We are obligated to fight
and protect the citizens of our Nation wherever necessary and that
includes here on our own American soil. It is time to better serve
Americans in our own homeland by being tougher on crime and criminals
and attempting to help the victims.
It is inconceivable to realize that every nine weeks there are as
many people murdered right here in America as were killed in all four
of the horrible 9/11 terrorists' attacks. The safety of its people is
our government's most important and critical role.
My small family consists of proud Americans. Since the American
Revolution, our family has fought in every major war for equality and
the freedom of all Americans in this great Nation. We have worked hard,
contributed greatly and never asked for a handout from anyone. My
Father, Marion Thompson, was a police officer, my Mother, Geneva
Thompson, was a committed and respected volunteer for good and my
Brother, Mickey Thompson, contributed greatly to the youth and to the
development of automobile safety. My family believed the U.S.
Constitution was written to protect, balance and establish justice,
yes, establish justice . . . And, that is true, it does establish
justice . . . unless, you have the misfortune of becoming a victim of
violent crime.
Like many other crime victims, there has been tremendous pain and
grief to our family, which was expanded due to the fact that the moment
we became victims of crime, our rights were ignored in favor of the
killer. That means, a murderer or a rapist has rights not afforded to
victims, all because we, the victim, are not even mentioned in our
U.S. Constitution.
My husband and I were not permitted to be in the courtroom during
three trials of the men who murdered our Son. There was no reason to
exclude us, other than the defense could get by with it. We were forced
to sit in the hall, like a dog with fleas. Yet, the killers, along
with all their family and supporters, were inside the courtroom
portraying a family unit.
We were not allowed to be heard, yet, the killer's family was able
to testify in front of the jury, proclaiming the goodness of the
defendant and the victim as a lesser person. Our Son's killers were
convicted of first-degree murder; we believed we were finally through
the process, but we were not informed of the following court action.
We were not notified of a hearing before the District Court of
Appeal. Therefore, no family member was present to represent our
murdered Son, however, in full force, forty members of one of the
killer's contingency, were in the courtroom, as they had been informed
and notified. The conviction of our Son's murderer was overturned by
that Appellate Court. The ``capital case'' killer was released on bail
in violation of the California State Constitution and without
consideration for our family's safety. We learned through headlines in
the media that there was to be another trial and our Son's killer had
been released back into society where he continued his deadly criminal
lifestyle and others were hurt.
We contacted the Attorney General's Prosecutor handling our case
and asked why she hadn't bothered calling or notifying us regarding the
appeal, the pending court proceedings and the killer's release. Her
answer was demeaning, but typical, she said, ``We never notify the
victims, they simply don't understand.'' However, we knew the true
reason, unlike the killer's defense, she was not required to notify us,
because we were only the Mom and Dad of the murdered victim, his next
of kin. We did not have the right to be notified!
Our family would never ask for or want restitution, our Son's life
does not have a dollar value. However, among many other significant
costs, we had to ``cough-up'' $2,000.00 to get his car out of storage,
after it had been impounded by the police for evidence. The trials took
eight years to complete, and during that time our life was controlled
by the defense. There was no consideration for our panic-stricken
personal life, our safety, our plans, family holidays, or finances.
Today, the inmates have free access to the internet and often they
utilize their contacts to build web-sites to defame their victim, the
victim's family and law enforcement.
I believe my lovely Granddaughter, Melissa, summed it up best. She
said, ``Mom (that's what she calls me), what would it be like to live
in a ``normal family?'' Those words about ripped my heart out, as we
have tried very hard to maintain a ``normal'' and loving family. When I
asked her what she meant, she simply said, ``Every time I ask you and
Papa if we can take a vacation together, your answer is always the
same.'' ``Well Sweetie, we can't promise you, as we may have to be in
court.'' Melissa then responded with, ``You know, Mom, the murderer
kills our family, then they control the rest of our lives through
manipulating the justice system, it's not fair.'' I think Melissa's
words pretty well sum up the feelings of most victims of violent crime.
The entire family's life is harmfully altered, not only by the
criminal's evil act, but also by a justice system that continues to put
the criminal and their desires first.
You rarely hear from people like us, because victims are too
devastated to speak on the subject. We have no financial help or
attorneys representing us. Unlike the defense attorney's associations
we are financially unable to contribute to legislators and policy
makers. The victims are forced to fend for themselves. And unlike the
inmates, victims don't have medical care, meals, exercise,
psychologists, attorneys and legal advisers. Victims are always the
only ones at the table who are not on someone's payroll. Victims pay
their own costs, even to be heard, like today.
Congressmen, what we victims fail to understand, is how in this
great Nation, we have allowed the violent criminals and their defense
attorneys to have many rights. And, there are no rights for the honest,
law-abiding good American citizen, who through no fault of their own,
have become a victim of violent crime. I'm certain this is not what the
Founders of this Great Nation and the authors of our Constitution
intended and it needs to be corrected immediately.
Many were very disturbed when we learned that the President's
budget recommends taking the VOCA funds (Victims of Crime Act) away
from the victims, the injured party, the intended beneficiaries and the
precise people the fund was designed to help! The Victim of Crime Act
is a legacy, introduced by President Ronald Reagan and passed in 1984
and funded in 1986. The money is generated from fines levied on
criminal perpetrators. In other words, this fund is NOT taxpayers'
money, it comes from the criminal, the very person who caused there to
be a victim. Is any legislator paying attention, ``watching the store''
or caring about victims? These funds are generated from the criminal,
the person responsible for the crime, it is the correct source, and
NOW, in the budget, apparently some ``uninformed staffer'' is trying to
eliminate those victims' funds, which is the only source for medical,
burial, hospital and necessary help. Please correct this inequity
immediately. Congress must reject the taking of this money and instead,
raise the cap from 625 million dollars to a billion dollars. The
criminals are housed, fed, educated, medically cared for and given
every opportunity to succeed with enormous funds spent on their comfort
and welfare. Are you truly going to deny our victims help, even though
the funding is supplied by the perpetrators. There is something greatly
wrong with this viewpoint and philosophy.
It seems the honest law-abiding person may be on the wrong side of
the bars? The criminals have no worries, there needs are met. Last
month I listened to the accused killer of my Brother and Sister-in-law
complain that he was forced to wait four hours to see a doctor. The
last time my husband needed to see a doctor it took two weeks to get an
appointment! I also watch as
I can assure you, that we and thousands of other victims are the
product of others before us doing nothing. Hopefully, you are unwilling
to continue that standard and will move to action to better protect the
honest, hard-working American.
It is appalling that a vicious murderer has rights and the law-
abiding American citizen, who becomes a victim, has no rights.
Unfortunately, the justice system has been altered, until it is now
broken. Victims ask that you take a strong an honest look at the
inequities of the so-called ``justice'' system.
On behalf of FORCE 100, representing crime victims from every state
in our nation, thank you for allowing me to be heard.
God Bless your work and God Bless our great Nation.
Mr. Coble. Thank you, Ms. Campbell.
Ms. Leary?
TESTIMONY OF MARY LOU LEARY, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, NATIONAL
CENTER FOR VICTIMS OF CRIME
Ms. Leary. Good morning, Chairman Coble, Ranking Member
Scott, and Members of the Subcommittee. I am Mary Lou Leary,
Executive Director of the National Center for Victims of Crime.
We're a national, private nonprofit, and we recently celebrated
our 20th year of working to secure the rights and protect the
interests of victims of crime.
So I appreciate the chance to speak before you this morning
on a topic of great importance to victims of crime, and that
is, collecting the restitution that is owed to victims.
You know, this year is the 10th anniversary of the Federal
Mandatory Victims Restitution Act of 1996. So it seems like a
particularly appropriate time to reflect on our performance in
providing restitution to crime victims. The National Center has
spent many years examining this issue of restitution and
working with advocates and policymakers to promote best
practices in this arena.
Unfortunately, I have to say that when you look closely at
the situation, our performance is pretty poor, especially at
the Federal level. Most recent public figures show uncollected
criminal debt at the Federal level to be over $25 billion. 70
percent of that is restitution that is owed to individuals and
others who are harmed by defendants. Last year the GAO released
a study that examined five high-dollar white-collar financial
fraud cases. GAO found that only 7 percent of the restitution
ordered in those cases was ever collected, and that was up to 8
years after sentencing. We simply have to do a better job.
And I would note also, that of the uncollected criminal
debt, about two-thirds of that actually is white-collar fraud
and corporate crime, so we're not talking about the kind of
run-of-the-mill, ne'er-do-well with no assets here.
The payment of restitution really matters. It matters to
victims of crime. Some of the most heartbreaking cases that
involve restitution, and especially at the Federal level,
involve elderly victims who have lost their life savings to
fraud. This crime robs them not only of their money but of
their sense of security, their peace of mind, and for many of
them, even their ability to remain independent and live in
their own homes. The depression and the stress that comes in
the aftermath of crime and of losing everything can lead to a
steep decline in physical health as well.
For these victims, restitution may preserve their future.
Even for victims who have not lost their life savings,
restitution for the harm they sustained is important as they
rebuild their lives.
Restitution is important for offenders as well. Courts have
recognized that restitution is significant because it forces
the defendant to confront, in concrete terms, confront the harm
he has caused. In fact, there is a study that shows the
connection between restitution and recidivism, and it showed
that individuals who paid a higher percentage of their ordered
restitution were actually less likely to recidivate. It's
pretty amazing.
Significantly, paying criminal fines did not have the same
impact. Enforcing these orders of restitution is important to
the criminal justice system as well, so the defendants will not
walk away feeling like, ``I'm above the law. If I don't pay,
nothing will happen.'' And it's a message to victims and to the
public that when the court issues an order, the court will
enforce an order.
So what can we do to do better? First of all, in
appropriate cases, courts must have the ability to freeze
assets prior to conviction, especially with financial fraud.
It's amazing how much money these defendants have, and
especially in fraud and corporate crimes at the time of
indictment, and then when it comes around, at time of
conviction, when it comes around time for sentencing, for
restitution, those assets have been secreted, dissipated,
transferred to family members and so on.
Second, we have to provide more resources to fund
collection efforts. And, finally, we have to create a system to
provide immediate restitution to the neediest victims of all.
Some States actually have such a program, like Vermont. A needy
victim can get immediate restitution up to $10,000, and then
the money is paid back to that fund by the offender. That's a
system that works.
Thank you for your time, and the National Center would be
very happy to work with this Committee to address this issue of
restitution, and to answer any questions, of course, that you
have.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Leary follows:]
Prepared Statement of Mary Lou Leary
Good morning, Chairman Coble, ranking member Scott, and members of
the Subcommittee. My name is Mary Lou Leary, and I am executive
director of the National Center for Victims of Crime. The National
Center is a nonprofit, resource and advocacy organization that recently
celebrated our 20th year of championing the rights and interests of
victims of crime. I appreciate the opportunity to appear before you
this morning to address a topic of great importance: collecting the
restitution owed to victims of crime.
This year marks the 10th anniversary of the federal Mandatory
Victims Restitution Act of 1996.\1\ In passing that Act, Congress
intended to ``ensure that the loss to crime victims is recognized, and
that they receive the restitution that they are due'' as well as ``to
ensure that the offender realizes the damage caused by the offense and
pays the debt owed to the victim as well as to society.'' \2\ This 10th
anniversary is an appropriate time to reflect on our performance in
providing restitution to crime victims. The National Center has spent
many years examining the issue of restitution, working with advocates
and policymakers to promote best practices in implementing this key
victims'right.\3\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ Pub. L. 104-132, title II, subtitle A (Sec. 201 et seq.), 110
Stat. 1227 (1996).
\2\ S. Rpt. No. 104-179, at 24 (1995).
\3\ See, for example, National Center for Victims of Crime,
``Restitution: Making it Work,'' OVC Legal Series Bulletin #5 (November
2002); National Center for Victims of Crime ``Ordering Restitution to
the Crime Victim,'' OVC Legal Series Bulletin # 6 (November 2002);
National Victim Center, ``1996 Victims' Rights Sourcebook: A
Compilation and Comparison of Victims' Rights Laws,'' (Arlington, VA:
National Victim Center, 1997).
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Unfortunately, an honest examination shows we're doing a poor job
in implementing this right, especially at the federal level. The most
recent public figures show uncollected criminal debt at the federal
level to be over $25 billion-seventy percent of which is restitution
owed to individuals and others harmed by defendants.\4\ A study
released last year by the GAO examined five high-dollar white collar
financial fraud cases and found that only about seven percent of the
restitution ordered in those cases was collected-up to eight years
after the offender's sentencing.\5\ We simply must do better.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\4\ U.S. General Accounting Office, ``Criminal Debt: Actions Still
Needed to Address Deficiencies in Justice's Collection Processes,''
GAO-04-338 (Washington, DC: March 2004), 2. This figure excludes
restitution owed to federal agencies.
\5\ U.S. General Accounting Office, ``Criminal Debt: Court-Ordered
Restitution Amounts Far Exceed Likely Collections for the Crime Victims
in Selected Financial Fraud Cases,'' GAO-05-08 (Washington, DC: January
2005), 3.
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why enforcement of restitution orders is important
The payment of restitution is of great importance to victims of
crime. Some of the most heartbreaking restitution cases, particularly
prevalent at the federal level, involve elderly victims who have lost
their life savings to fraud. The crime robs them not only of their
money, but their sense of security and even their ability to remain
independent and live in their own home. The ensuing depression and
stress lead to a steep decline in their physical health. For these
victims, restitution may preserve their future.
Even for victims who have not lost their life savings, restitution
for the harm they sustained is important as they rebuild their lives.
Repayment of their financial losses, including property losses, can be
crucial in helping to repair the damages from the offense. It is also
important as a tangible demonstration that the state, and the offender,
recognize that the harm was suffered by the victim and that amends will
be made.
Restitution is important for offenders as well. Courts have
recognized that restitution is significant and rehabilitative because
it ``forces the defendant to confront, in concrete terms, the harm his
or her actions have caused.'' \6\ In fact, a study that examined the
connection between restitution and recidivism found that individuals
who paid a higher percentage of their ordered restitution were less
likely to commit a new crime.\7\ Significantly, the payment of criminal
fines did not have this effect, indicating that it is the act of
reparation to the victim that is important.\8\
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\6\ People v. Moser, 50 Cal. App. 4th 130, 135 (1996).
\7\ Cynthia Kempinen, ``Payment of Restitution and Recidivism,''
Research Bulletin 2, No. 2 (State College, PA: Pennsylvania Commission
on Sentencing, October 2002).
\8\ Id.
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Enforcing orders of restitution is also important to our criminal
justice system. When a criminal court has issued an order, and that
order remains unenforced, respect for our justice system suffers.
Victims lose faith, criminal justice system employees become cynical,
and offenders learn that they will not be held accountable when they
conduct themselves as if they are ``above the law.''
what can we do?
First, in appropriate cases, courts must have the ability to freeze
assets prior to conviction. This is particularly necessary in cases
involving financial fraud. The recent GAO report I spoke of earlier
noted that many fraud defendants have significant financial resources
at the start of the criminal case, but by the time of sentencing have
dissipated, transferred, or hidden much of their wealth.\9\ We must
give prosecutors the tools to preserve assets in certain cases.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\9\ Supra, note 2, page 3.
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Some states already allow this. In Pennsylvania, prosecutors can
seek a temporary restraining order in cases in which there is a
substantial probability that the state will prevail, that restitution
of more than $10,000 will be ordered, and that failure to enter the
order will result in the assets being unavailable for payment of the
anticipated restitution.\10\ In California, prosecutors may seek an
order to prevent offenders from dissipating or secreting specified
assets or property at the time of the filing of a complaint or
indictment when a case involves a pattern of fraud and the taking of
more than $100,000.\11\ Federal prosecutors should have a similar
ability to preserve assets for restitution.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\10\ 42 PA Cons. Stat. Sec. 9728 (2005).
\11\ Cal. Penal Code Sec. 186.11 (2006).
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Second, we must provide more resources to collection efforts.
Financial Litigation Units, or FLUs, established to pursue collection
of federal debt in U.S. Attorneys' offices, tell us they are
understaffed.\12\ No government program can be fully effective without
adequate resources. We must make FLUs a funding priority. Many FLUs
also turn to a program that provides additional, highly experienced
asset investigators for specific cases, called the Financial Litigation
Investigator Program. This program should be expanded, to make this
tool more widely available.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\12\ See also U.S. General Accounting Office, ``Criminal Debt:
Court-Ordered Restitution Amounts,'' 18.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Finally, we must create a system to provide immediate restitution
to the neediest victims. Some victims, particularly vulnerable or frail
seniors, cannot wait the years it may take to collect restitution from
an offender. We must create a program that can provide restitution to
them immediately, while the program is reimbursed by the defendant over
time.
Such a program has been created in Vermont.\13\ Victims of crime
who are awarded restitution can immediately take their order to the
state's Restitution Fund, where up to $10,000 of the order is paid
immediately. The Fund then collects from the offender. The Fund has
been operational since July of 2004, and in its first year has paid
1,400 claims. Importantly, with a trained staff including collection
analysts and an attorney, no restitution orders have been determined to
be uncollectible.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\13\ 2003 Vt. Acts & Resolves No. 57.
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These three steps would significantly improve the provision of
restitution. The result would be a more complete recovery for crime
victims, a restorative sentence for offenders, and a system that comes
closer to the ideal of ``doing justice.''
Thank you for your time. I'd be happy to answer any questions.
Mr. Coble. Thank you, Ms. Leary.
Dr. Coffman?
TESTIMONY OF KATHRYN COFFMAN, M.D., MEDICAL DIRECTOR OF
CHILDHELP CHILDREN'S CENTER, ST. JOSEPH'S HOSPITAL AND MEDICAL
CENTER
Dr. Coffman. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and Members of the
Committee.
I've been a pediatrician for nearly 25 years, but for the
past 15 years I've been working in the field of child
maltreatment, and my primary role has been medical evaluation
of children who are referred for abuse or neglect. I have done
this in different regions of the country and in different
practice settings, but at the current time I'm very fortunate
to be working in a multidisciplinary center called the
Childhelp Children's Center of Arizona.
This is a child advocacy center that co-houses
professionals from different agencies who work in the field of
child maltreatment, including law enforcement, social services,
mental health and medical personnel.
The multidisciplinary team concept allows professionals
from different disciplines, with different agendas and
different missions, and often different philosophic approaches,
to find common ground to best serve the children and families
in our community.
What I would like to do in the time allotted to me is
address some of the issues in my statement that are covered
more fully in the written statement.
The first of these, and the foundation of really what I'd
like to talk about is the necessity of intensive early
intervention in the lives of children who are living in
situations where they are experiencing abuse or neglect. There
is a lot of information available on the effects of
environment, on the developing infant. And I would refer you to
work by Dr. Bruce Perry, a child psychiatrist in Houston. I did
list contact information in the website in my citation. But
he's done a lot of work on neurobiology and neurodevelopment in
children who are exposed to trauma.
One of the things that's very clear is that infancy and
early childhood is the time of life when we are most
susceptible to environmental or traumatic influences. And
children who are raised in neglectful or traumatic
environments, experience profound, negative impact on their
development, and this is something that's going to eventually
touch us all. We need to acknowledge, I think, the importance
of early childhood and early childhood development if we're
going to hope to make a meaningful impact in child abuse and in
the outcome of these children.
The second issue follows from the first, and that involves
the way our system tends to react to children who are victims
of abuse and neglect, and that is, we have a reactive system
rather than a proactive system. We wait until something's
happened and then we try and do something about it. While this
is understandable to some extent, because it's hard to do
something when something has not happened yet, there are
certain risk factors for abuse that are well recognized, for
example, substance abuse; for example, domestic violence. We
know children who live in these homes are very, very high risk
for abuse and neglect, and yet, we leave children in these
homes usually until such time as a serious injury occurs, and
then the response is often too little and too late.
I would encourage the Committee to support whatever action
needs to be done to put prevention services in place for these
children before such time as they have to experience severe
abuse or neglect.
Another issue is our legal system. Our child abuse cases
don't usually make it to the criminal justice system unless a
child is killed or severely injured, but they do make it to the
civil justice system or the family courts. And what we see in
family court is an emphasis on family reunification. Above all,
that seems to be the overriding goal of the civil justice
system.
The problem with this is that we seem to lose sight of the
fact that child abuse is a crime, and children who have been
abused are victims of a crime, and people who abuse their
children are criminals. We don't treat these children as
victims, and we often tend to return them to the very people
who victimize them.
A parallel thing is family preservation in the social
service system. Family preservation seems to be the overriding
goal of our social service agencies across the country, and
although it's a nice idea to keep children with their families,
and all children should be raised in healthy, nurturing,
supportive families, the problem is some of these families are
not families that should be maintained. When family
preservation becomes the primary goal, child safety and child
well-being becomes a secondary goal and we lose sight again of
the importance of that.
Bottom line, I think, is that we need to move from a
family-centered to a child-centered welfare system. We need to
make children's rights and children's needs our primary focus
when we make determinations on what's going to happen with
them.
I would like to close on a message of hope. Again, I have
the great good fortune to work in a multidisciplinary center,
and we are able to provide in that center comprehensive
services to children and families who are in the situations. In
so doing, I think we're able to greatly minimize the likelihood
that this child is going to be revictimized, greatly minimize
the chance that this child's siblings are going to be
victimized, and most importantly, greatly minimize the chance
that this child will grow up to be an abusive parent
themselves.
These multidisciplinary centers are not widely available
throughout the country. They should be. All children should
have access to them. And given that funding is one of the
primary reasons why they're not available, I would echo the
comments of my previous two speakers, we need to free up money
from the Crime Victims Fund in order to put in place these
prevention services on behalf of our children and behalf of all
of us.
Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Coffman follows:]
Prepared Statement of Kathryn Coffman
Mr. Coble. Thank you, Dr. Coffman.
Ms. Lawrence?
TESTIMONY OF PHYLLIS TURNER LAWRENCE, INDEPENDENT CONSULTANT,
RESTORATIVE JUSTICE AND VICTIMS SERVICES
Ms. Lawrence. First I would like to thank you very much,
Chairman Coble and Ranking Member Scott, and all the other
Members of the Committee and the staffers and the audience, for
taking the time out of your busy schedule to think about these
very critical issues.
Mr. Coble. Ms. Lawrence, if you would suspend just a
moment. I failed to mention we have been joined by the
distinguished gentleman from Arizona, Mr. Flake, and the
distinguished gentleman from Texas, Mr. Gohmert. Good to have
you all with us.
And I will not penalize you for that extra time, Ms.
Lawrence.
Ms. Lawrence. Thank you. As my written testimony describes,
I'm the survivor of a violent rape in 1989 by a man who broke
into my home. I was a practicing attorney at the time. In fact,
my home was my office, and he failed to notice my attorney-at-
law card on the door, which was probably one of his major
mistakes.
He would up being convicted, and he's doing time in
California. Now, I'll be talking about that in a minute. But
after I quit practicing law, I came to D.C., and I received
extensive training in victim assistance, including my 3 years
at the National Organization for Victim Assistance in the mid
'90's. That experience turned me into a victim advocate. I've
also had extensive training and experience in restorative
justice, and I'll talk a little bit more about that paradigm.
But there are three relevant points in terms of how victims
are treated in the criminal justice system that I would like to
mention about my own case. First, at the trial, the prosecutor
told me to be more emotional on the stand. It was obvious that
he wanted the jury to see someone angry and upset, even though,
fortunately, I had had great support and was already beginning
to heal.
Secondly, admittedly, it was very challenging to see this
man that I knew had raped me, go ahead and plead not guilty and
deny the violence he perpetrated and insist on a trial.
However, I considered it my victory over the rapist and his
awful acts, that I was not swayed from my commitment to the
United States Constitution and its proper protections against
abuses of Government power. The terrible sense of violation I
experienced could easily have led me to substitute emotion for
reason and principle, forgetting our basic premise that one is
innocent until proven guilty by a court of law, and
potentially, any one of us could be wrongfully accused, as Mr.
Scott was referring to, we know that that happens, so we know
we need to maintain every single protection in the
Constitution. However, as a victim, I'm not at risk for such
threats of abuse of governmental power, such to the extent that
I would need constitutional protection.
Thirdly, at the sentencing, when I gave my victim impact
statement, it was extremely frustrating that there was no way
to make sure that this man, who had so violated me, would even
listen to me, pay attention to me as I described the pain he
had inflicted. But I was very fortunate in my recovery going
very well.
Over my now 11 years of involvement with victims, I have
met many who have never received support that helps them move
toward recovery, and therefore, their grief, their anger and
their fear continue to dominate their lives. This is
tremendously sad.
Also in my 3 years at NOVA on our victims hotline, I spoke
with probably at least 3,000 victims, and I can tell you that,
unfortunately, more than half of them were complaining about
the very people they expected to help them, the prosecutors,
the police, people in the correctional system and sometimes the
judges.
So it is critical that we continue to educate the people in
the allied professions, the people who come into contact with
victims, that we continue to educate and raise up qualified
victim services providers, and that we make sure that the laws
that already are there to protect victims' rights are enforced
by those who are responsible for implementing them. So I too
join everyone on the panel in asking that Congress leave alone
the funding mechanism for VOCA, and in fact, increase funding
for victims and victim services.
I would like to turn now to talking about something that
has become my major passion in life, and that is the paradigm
of restorative justice. Understandably, many times people feel,
let's just lock him up, take him away, get rid of him, I don't
want to see him again. But we do believe in fundamental
fairness in this country and we do realize that people are
going to get out, and many people aren't going to be locked up
in the first place. So we need to address what are kinds of
processes that are really going to take into account the needs
of the victims and the community, and at the same time actually
hold offenders accountable in a real way.
For many, accountability has come to mean punishment. We
lock them up. They're being accountable. They're paying their
debt to society. However, to the victim, they may appreciate
that, as I do, of feeling safe, but I don't feel that the man
doing what will be at least 26 years in prison without ever,
ever having to face what he did to me, to understand, by having
to go through sex offender treatment services, that he will
come out in 26 years minimally--if he does good time--of his
48-year sentence, without ever getting it, without ever
understanding, without ever taking any real responsibility for
his actions.
He left behind a wife and four children. One of the reasons
he was able to be captured was because he had abused his wife.
She and her children were left behind, and they are not
protected under victims of compensation acts, and I believe
that the family members of offenders, and offenders who are
victimized, should also be protected.
So I'd like you to really consider the meaning out of the
dictionary of the word ``accountability.'' It's the trait of
being answerable to someone for something, or being responsible
for one's conduct. From that perspective, this is what is owed
by the offender to the victim and the community, rather than a
debt to the amorphous State that none of us can actually really
experience.
Restorative justice asks three questions: Who has been
hurt? What are their needs? And whose obligations are they? So
we really look at the larger picture and really see what the
victim's needs are, and how can the system address them, the
public address them, and what is the offender's responsibility,
and how can we help that offender become competent enough that
they can make repair in realistic and affirmative ways.
I would also like to add to Ms. Leary's comments about
restitution, that we found that when people participate in a
restorative process, which is either directly meeting with
the--a meeting facilitated by trained facilitators between a
voluntary victim and a voluntary offender, or shuttle
diplomacy, that somebody's facilitating conversations with them
independently and bringing the information back to the table,
that when the agreements are made for reparation, the rate of
compliance is very, very high. I ran a program with juveniles
and we had almost 100 percent rate of compliance.
Thank you very much. I hope you will consider looking at
the testimony, and consider the concept of restorative justice,
and consider piloting projects on the Federal level so we can
really have good ways of testing implementation.
Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Lawrence follows:]
Prepared Statement of Phyllis Turner Lawrence
Mr. Chairman and Committee Members:
First I would like to offer my sincerest appreciation to
Chairperson Coble and members of this subcommittee for taking the time
to examine the needs of victims of crime in order to consider
appropriate ``next steps'' by Congress. Thank you very much.
In 1989, I was living alone and working out of my home in
California as an attorney in private practice, some of which consisted
of criminal defense. In the 12 years that I had been practicing law in
California, and during my three years of law school at the University
of California, there had been little to no emphasis on thinking about
the victims of crime. However, I was politically active in women's
rights and had represented many women who were physically abused, as
well as the local shelter in a case over client confidentiality.
My own world changed when a stranger broke into my home and raped
me. Now I-- who had felt ``it will never happen to me,'' became a
victim myself. Besides the psychological and physical trauma of the
rape itself, there were the ongoing emotional challenges of having to
recall, over and over again, every minute detail of the horrific
experience in order to make sure that the rapist, who fortunately was
caught, would be convicted. These were pre-DNA days, and other than
blood typing matches from both his and my blood from fighting each
other, there was little forensic evidence, in fact, little evidence
other than my word. Fortunately, there was a conviction, and at
sentencing, I was able to give my victim impact statement in court, but
from behind the bench, and without being able to directly confront the
man who had caused me the worst harm of my life.
I was also very fortunate to have a wonderfully empathetic female
police officer and then a very supportive female victim/witness
coordinator in the district attorney's office. However, the male
prosecutor chose to direct me to stay in his office when others were
testifying, claiming he did not want the jury to be distracted by
watching my every reaction. This was odd, as usually that's exactly
what prosecutors want, but later--when I realized that he also told me
to show more emotional when testifying--I understood that he wanted an
angry, upset victim, not the calm person that I had become through my
own healing process. I also was later told by someone very familiar
with this prosecutor that she believed that he did not want a victim
who was an attorney in the courtroom evaluating his every move.
I make these points to underscore my later experience when working
for the National Organization for Victim Assistance (NOVA) here in
Washington in the mid-90s. I realized that I was so blessed to have had
good support from friends, my SGI-USA Buddhist community and a good
therapist, that I was able to begin immediately on a healing journey.
However, I have seen through my now 11 years of involvement with
victims, that many victims who do not have sufficient professional,
financial, emotional, or spiritual support, continue to suffer with
their anger, confusion, and fear dominating their lives.
I was trained in crisis response and victim advocacy by the NOVA
experts, and besides my regular research and writing, I answered NOVA's
national victim hotline. Over my three years, I estimate that I
responded to calls from perhaps 3000 victims. To my surprise, and
perhaps to yours, more than half those victims were hurt or angry about
the treatment, not by the offender, but by the professionals they
expected to ``represent'' them, the police and the prosecutors, and
sometimes the judges. We had to explain over and over that one of our
goals was to better train all those professionals to be more sensitive
to victims and to enforce the rights they already had under state
statutes and constitutions.
That work of education and professional training of allied
professionals and even more importantly, sufficient financial support
to provide more breadth and depth to victim services across the country
is critical. Therefore, I offer my strongest encouragement to the
members of Congress to not only continue to leave the Victims of Crime
Act (VOCA) funding mechanisms intact, but to also increase funding to
the Office for Victims of Crime and the federal programs regarding
violence against women.
For myself, being an attorney, I rationally understood that an
accused person has the right to plead not guilty and to go to trial. As
a victim, I knew he was the man who raped me, so it was hard to take
that emotionally. The terrible sense of violation I experienced could
easily have led me to substitute emotion for reason and principle,
becoming the kind of victim who could not abide the critical legal
distinction: that one is innocent until proven guilty. One victory over
the rapist that I achieved was that his awful acts did not sway my
commitment as an American and as an attorney to the United States
Constitution and its proper protections against abuses of government
power in regards to the arrest and prosecution of individuals accused
of a crime.
I wanted the fairest trial possible, so there would be no chance
for an effective appeal. And of course, when the jury changed his
status from ``accused'' to ``convicted'' and he was no longer the
``defendant'' but the recognized ``offender,'' I was relieved and felt
validated.
There is one thing that I still am angry about: he was sentenced to
48 years in prison, but there is absolutely no requirement that he ever
have to come to grips with the pain he caused me nor the wife and four
children he left behind. I'd rather he have to at least periodically be
part of a demanding sex offender treatment program, and be evaluated
and considered for release, than waste taxpayers' money keeping him
locked up for his minimum of 26 years only to get out even more angry
and ready to do violence again.
I have been able to embrace a holistic, balanced approach to
thinking about how we need to respond as a society to crime. This
paradigm is often referred to as restorative justice. We must strike
the balance between feeling strongly about wanting to ``take 'em away
and lock 'em up'' with our fundamental American ideals--beliefs in
fairness and justice, and the responsibility of both the government and
the people to treat everyone--in this realm, victim and offender
alike--with dignity and respect. Key restorative principles also
include the importance of accountability and of competency
development--the need to help each develop the competency necessary to
heal, to repair, and to be productive citizens.
Americans' respect for individual liberty is coupled with our
expectation of individual responsibility, or accountability. It is now
common for those in the criminal justice system to just assume that
punishment equates with accountability. However, when we talk of
governmental accountability--a frequent buzzword these days--there
seems to be an assumption closer to the American Heritage Dictionary
definition: ``a form of trustworthiness; the trait of being answerable
to someone for something or being responsible for one's conduct.''
From a restorative justice perspective, the latter definition--
``being answerable to someone . . . for one's conduct''--fits what is
owed by the offender to the victim and to the greater public, not to
the amorphous ``state.'' We have to determine who has been harmed--such
as individuals, family members, neighbors, the community at large? And
then they determine in what ways they have been harmed and in what
manner could those harms be repaired, literally or symbolically. Then,
all the stakeholders, collectively, should determine whose obligation
is it to repair the various harms and how that should be done in
meaningful, practical, measurable, ways and as efficiently as possible.
Using my own experience as an example: I was harmed, as was his
family. There was certainly physical harm, at least to me and to his
wife, who had been previously battered (it was through those court
records that they could produce a photo of him that I was able to
identify). We all no doubt experienced a variety of emotional and
financial harm as well. Who owes the repair? The rapist at least. Not
ever being told any of his background other than he was just one year
out of the service, I do not know who, if anyone, may have been
responsible for contributing to his psychological makeup and attitudes.
[In some instances, especially involving juveniles, the parents'
culpability comes to light as well. In some circumstances, there are
others spurring on the criminal behavior, such as kids spreading
rumors, leading to a fight among students.]
What about my landlords for the poor lighting, lock system, etc.,
that allowed his entrance? Yes, they owe, and they did pay me some
compensation, which was handled in the civil realm, which only measures
harm by the dollar. However, in the criminal realm, the assumption is
that the ``debt owed to society'' is only payable to the State, and is
measured specifically by time under state control--either in the
community or in some form of lock-up, and/or possibly other
restrictions on behavior, fines, requirements for attending programs,
and only occasionally financial restitution, which is often
uncollectible or uncollected.
How can someone ``repair'' the harm done when they forcibly violate
someone's personhood? Obviously, they cannot do something as simple and
direct as paying back the value of a stolen car or replacing a broken
window. However, I, like many victims, come to feel that the offender
owes me, personally, based on my needs.
What are some of the greatest needs of victims? Of course, first is
safety, which, unfortunately can never be fully guaranteed.
Often ranking stronger in victim studies than the need for
retribution is the need to experience some control over our lives--to
have the experience make some sense; to have answers to the questions
that plague us. I had to do my own spiritual work to understand what
was the ``purpose'' or ``meaning'' in my own life.
But regarding the people who do harm, we may realize that in
general, some people are just ``messed up'' or ``mean and evil.'' But
still, the questions about the offender remain: ``Who ARE you? Why did
you do this? Why me? Do you have any idea what you have done to me?''
They go on: ``How did you do it? Have you done it before? What makes
you think it is okay to treat people like this? Are you going to hurt
me again? Will you hurt someone else? What will it take to get you to
change?''
Victims also rate accountability as very important, but define it
as the offender acknowledging, understanding and accepting personal
responsibility for the harm and doing something about it, whether in
the form of paying something back financially, performing some service
to the victim or the community, and particularly making efforts to
change the attitudes and the behaviors that created the harm. When
victims are able to know that the person who hurt them ``gets it,''
even if they are unable (obviously) to go back and change things, and
if they are capable, will pay them and the community back in some way,
and will not re-offend--this goes an incredibly long way in helping the
person move from ``victim'' to ``survivor'' and hopefully, even to
``thriver.''
One of the reasons that victims feel so frustrated with the
criminal justice and correctional systems is that they do not get such
opportunities. We can get so little information of what went on in the
crime, what the system is doing, and what the outcomes are of court
proceedings, probation, incarceration and parole. And I do not just
mean being notified that someone is up for a hearing or is being
released, or even where he or she is going to live and work, but more
importantly, ``Where is his head at? Am I at risk? What does his family
think of him--are they scared? Should I be?''
A truly victim-centered (and restorative) approach to justice
should afford the opportunity for victims to get their questions
answered, to be part of the process in determining what the harm was
and to be part of the process in determining how the harm can be
repaired, including making agreements about material or symbolic
obligations, and in fact to be directly involved in policy-making.
Like the approximately other 96% of incarcerated people in the U.S.
the man who raped me will be released. For me, true accountability to
me and to the public lies squarely with two entities. The first is
Michael Alexander Christopher, who needs to admit (unlike at trial)
that he fought me, hurt me, and raped me, and that he understands what
triggers that violence and is willing and able to do everything in his
power to manage those triggers. And if he is not willing or capable of
all of that? Then the California criminal justice system and the
Department of Corrections are accountable to me and to the public to
explain why they failed to bring him to that level of accountability.
While I do not expect their success in every case, a do-nothing but
``lock 'em up'' approach just does not satisfy this victim and I
suspect many others as well.
We have to redefine our values, policies and practices in order to
create a balanced, restorative approach to dealing with crime.
We need to realign our allocation of resources to support the
needs:
of victims of all kinds of crimes, whether there is
an accused or not,
of offenders so that they can develop the
competencies needed make repair and be productive citizens, and
for the training of victim-sensitive, restoratively-
minded professionals who will also follow the laws already in
place for victim protection and participation, and
of communities to be more involved and to be
supported in making the economic and social changes necessary
to create healthy children
While I am very sympathetic to the frustrations of victims dealing
with perceived inequities in how our adversarial system currently runs,
as a fellow victim and a victim advocate, I must encourage Congress,
victim rights supporters and the public, to devote every bit of energy
to transforming an adversarial, punishment-driven system to one which
is truly about changing and healing lives, not just processing cases.
I would be more than happy to answer any questions and to provide
the Chair and the Committee with more information about restorative
justice.
Thank you again for your time and attention.
Mr. Coble. Thank you, Ms. Lawrence.
Ladies, we impose the 5-minute rule against ourselves as
well, so if you all can keep your sentences or responses as
terse as possible. Now, I don't really mean to put you on a
short leash, but time is of the essence for you and for us. We
appreciate you all being here, and especially Ms. Campbell, who
took the red eye from the Coast. I know that was not a pleasant
encounter, but we appreciate that, Ms. Campbell.
Ms. Campbell, I'll start with you. My State of North
Carolina is the buckle of the NASCAR belt. Your brother was
well known there.
Ms. Campbell. Thank you, sir.
Mr. Coble. Now, he was murdered, 18, 19 years ago?
Ms. Campbell. 18.
Mr. Coble. 18. Ms. Campbell, let me ask you this: What
specific measures do you think can be addressed that will
remedy some of the deficiencies in the criminal justice system
when it comes to victims?
Ms. Campbell. Boy, there's a lot of them, but I would say--
--
Mr. Coble. Give me two or three.
Ms. Campbell. First of all, thank you for saying that about
my brother. He was a wonderful man. He just happened to be my
brother.
I think balancing the Constitution, where victims have some
rights to the Constitution since there's 23 rights given to the
criminal. At that time when it was written in 1786 it made
sense because people represented themselves. It's much
different today. But there's a whole long list of things that
can be done that could help. I think one of the things that I
am most emphatic about is the fact of the situation that
attorneys and the perpetrators can knowingly lie and deceive
the court. There just needs to be some sanctions on something
like that.
The families are hurt bad enough, but in order to make it
appear there were other people involved in the killing, you end
up being everything from a prostitute to a drug addict to the
mafia, and those things are delivered to the court, and so it
continues to hurt the family. They not only take our loved
ones, they try to take our reputation. And there seems to be no
sanctions. Nobody does anything about that, and I feel that
that's very painful.
Do you want me to go on with my list? I don't want to take
more time than I should.
Mr. Coble. Well, I may come back to you. Let me ask Ms.
Leary a question.
Ms. Leary, what do you say when a person says to you,
``Okay, Ms. Leary, how does restitution work? When the prisoner
is incarcerated he's judgment proof. His family has no funds or
no money at all.'' How do you respond to that as far as paying
to the victim?
Ms. Leary. I think it's important that the offender pays
something, and, you know, that's why it's important to
investigate assets immediately, to freeze assets immediately.
But if you do have an offender who just doesn't have any, and
then he is in prison, there are prison work programs, and I
believe that the offenders ought--whatever accounts they have
from their wages or from money they get from family members or
whatever, money should come from that and go to the restitution
to the victims. It's critically important. Some States actually
take up to 20 percent of an inmate's account for purposes of
restitution. It's just as important for the offender as it is
for the victim and the victim's family.
Mr. Coble. Thank you, Ms. Leary.
Dr. Coffman, describe the importance of the
multidisciplinary units assigned to handle children's abuse
specifically, (a) how are they funded? and; (b) how effective
are they?
Dr. Coffman. The multidisciplinary concept is one in which
professionals from different agencies work collaboratively. The
efficacy is largely related to the collaboration that takes
place between the different professionals or among the
different professionals. In our center, for example, the child
protective services workers work hand in hand in the
investigation with the police officers, so they don't duplicate
efforts and they're not in conflict. And I would say that our
efforts, instead of just being additive are actually
synergistic. We really provide extremely effective response and
very rapid response in investigation, as well as victim
treatment.
In terms of funding, our center basically exists in a
building with a support system that's provided by a nonprofit
organization called Childhelp, and all the agencies are
independent. I work for a hospital and I'm based there. The
police are funded by the city and so on.
There are other centers that are funded differently. There
is an up-front cost, obviously, to establishing these centers,
but I think the cost savings down the road is incredible. We
save a lot of money because of the efficiency of the
investigations.
Mr. Coble. Let me try to beat the red light by asking Ms.
Lawrence a question. Ms. Lawrence, I understand your theory and
concept of restorative justice, but explain to us, if you will,
in practical terms, how that would work in a court system with
a prosecutor on the one hand, a judge on the other, defense
counsel on the other, and finally, a probation and/or parole
officer?
Ms. Lawrence. Interestingly, actually, there's a model that
comes out of the Yukon called sentencing circles, but some
courts are utilizing them here in the United States, where
actually all of those parties that you just named, and the
victim, if they are caring to participate, the offender and
their support system, the support system of the victim, and in
some places, anyone in the community who wants to show up has
actually a circle, and there's--the people that are allowed
into this kind of circumstance, the offenders, generally have
had to jump through hoops to show their good faith that they're
taking responsibility for one, admitting. So this is actually a
sentencing process. And that they've already been making
efforts to clean up their act, you might say.
And they actually have a, maybe hours and hours long,
circle, with some facilitator having each person around the
circle passing a talking piece usually, be able to tell
whatever the topic of that round is, and generally it starts
with the telling of the stories of the impact. And then they
actually come up with a sentence that is the sentence of the
court. That's kind of the most obvious example given, your
example. Other times judges will send people to a restorative
process, which will be facilitated, clients prepared on both
sides, the parties be willing. They have a conference, discuss,
tell the stories, answer questions, discuss reparation, and
then that reparation agreement is sent back to the court either
as the whole or part of the sentence.
Mr. Coble. Well, I asked for a practical explanation and
you gave me a practical. I appreciate that.
My time has expired. The gentleman from Virginia.
Mr. Scott. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Ms. Lawrence, are any of those programs mandatory?
Ms. Lawrence. There's the rare case where a judge might say
you're ordered into meeting with the victim, but they shouldn't
be. Like with any mediation, many courts around the country
now, and especially in Virginia; we have a very excellent
system of mediation, for example, in family matters. The judge
does not order a person to mediate. They order them into the
mediation program which then can evaluate is this an
appropriate case. So the same way for a restorative justice
process. Is the offender being appropriate, and is the victim
interested and willing?
Some programs are using surrogate victims, so somebody else
is coming speaking for the victim, so there's still a
possibility for the offender to be accountable. And sometimes
it's community representatives. Some of the models, often
called Community Accountability Boards or panels, are using
community members who are also trained, and they're meeting
with, they're inviting the victim and their support, the
offender and their support, and they're having the same kind of
dialogue that I described. But if the victim doesn't come, you
still have the community working out with the offender what the
appropriate reparation agreement will be.
Mr. Scott. Thank you.
Ms. Leary, you mentioned prison work programs. We're doing
what we can to keep them alive. There have actually been
serious attacks on the prison work programs, but we're doing
what we can so that you can have that important restitution.
You mentioned uncollected debt. Do you have any idea of how
much of this is actually collectible?
Ms. Leary. I don't know how much is actually collectible,
and I think that that's one of the biggest problems that you
have in the system, is making a determination about what's
truly collectible and what's not.
One of the dangers, of course, is assuming, oh, you can't
get blood from a stone; why bother? And the system then turns
into a data entry system, so you have a tickler and you have to
make entries at every, you know, certain intervals, and the
time and energy is spent tickling the system as opposed to
making concerted efforts to collect. I think there's a
tremendous amount of training that needs to be done in order to
determine what's collectible and what's not and to really go
after it.
Mr. Scott. And a criminal court judge can jail somebody for
not paying what they can actually pay. You can't jail somebody
for paying what they don't have, but you can revoke parole,
probation if you have the ability to pay and don't.
Ms. Leary. That's correct. But it is not a crime to
willfully fail to pay restitution, and maybe it should be.
Mr. Scott. Well, yes, but you can condition probation and
parole on a good faith effort. You don't make the good faith
effort, they can revoke parole, which has, back door, about the
same impact.
Ms. Leary. Right.
Mr. Scott. You mentioned the victims' fund. Do I understand
that to be the source of the funds to be totally funds from
convicted prisoners?
Ms. Leary. The VOCA money, yes. The crime victims' fund, it
all comes from offenders.
Mr. Scott. Should we not put some general fund money in
there?
Ms. Leary. I think that victims should be getting as much
from the country as they possibly can. I think that the system,
the criminal justice system is not balanced, and I believe that
the only way that victims will get true justice is if they have
their own parallel path. Their rights should not be derivative
of the defendant's. They have their own set of rights, and
general fund money would certainly help----
Mr. Scott. Well, you know, if you're talking about general
fund money, you're not even discussing whether or not you're
affecting defendants' rights or not, and when you start
talking, as I've mentioned, the constitutional amendment and
balancing rights, you get into a debate. You don't get into a
debate if you just put general fund money in there to help the
victim.
Ms. Leary. That's true, but----
Mr. Scott. And if I could ask one other question, Mr.
Chairman.
You indicated for those who have a need, they can get up to
$10,000?
Ms. Leary. Yes.
Mr. Scott. Do they have to show a need? I mean if you have
a wealthy person who has suffered a loss, as opposed to a
person who has been financially devastated, would the person
financially devastated be able to get the money, whereas a
person that would like it but doesn't really need it, would
that be a factor?
Ms. Leary. I think that fund is available regardless, up to
the amount of 10,000.
Mr. Scott. Up to the amount of actual loss?
Ms. Leary. No, up to the amount of 10,000.
Mr. Scott. Yes, but----
Ms. Leary. Right, or the actual loss, whichever is less.
Mr. Scott. But your subjective need is not a factor?
Ms. Leary. No.
Mr. Scott. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Ms. Leary. And that's just one model. You know, you can
work from that. We'd be happy to work with the Committee to
help you learn about various State models.
Mr. Coble. I thank the gentleman from Virginia.
The distinguished gentleman from Ohio, who is no stranger
to this issue, Mr. Chabot.
Mr. Chabot. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate
it.
I want to once again thank all the witnesses for their
testimony here this morning, and also the courage that they've
shown in dealing with their own personal occurrences which have
happened within their own families and to themselves.
As I had mentioned in my opening statement, because of our
involvement with Deborah Culberson, we've been very involved
relative to the DNA testing when there are unidentified
remains, and one might not be sure who the victim actually is,
and they might be in a different State. Right now it's not
particularly coordinated in this country, and the remains might
be--there are literally thousands of incidences of remains
somewhere that have never been tested. And so, that's someone's
loved one, and somebody else is looking for a person. So you
just--we've been remiss in dealing with this issue.
Now, my question is, as I've mentioned before, in the
previous bill, we were able to get some funding in there to
encourage States to do the DNA testing, but at this point, it's
not mandatory that they do the testing. And I would just like
to see if any of the panelists have any opinion relative to the
DNA testing, whether this is an important issue, if you have
any ideas relative to how we might make this more effective, or
anything that you would like to comment about. I'd be happy to
hear from any of the witnesses that might want to weigh in on
the issue.
We'll start with Ms. Leary.
Ms. Leary. Yes, thank you. I'm a great believer in the
utility of DNA, both to protect the innocent and to convict
those who are guilty. And I think that the potential for DNA is
really untapped in many respects, certainly in the arena of
missing persons, certainly in the arena of using DNA for less
serious crimes, which I think would be very cost effective,
burglaries and so on. You know, you could save a lot of
investigative time up front if you used that technology.
I think if the Government--if we could have public-private
partnerships with some of these companies that are moving--that
have moved into the DNA arena and are doing a lot of research
and development with DNA, and if they can partner with public
entities, we could make a lot more headway.
There are a lot of issues for victims I think with DNA. You
know, for instance, when you have a family with a missing
person, when do you approach the family to try to get DNA
samples from them, and how do you approach the family in a way
that's sensitive, inclusive, and respectful of them. All of
those things matter so much. You know, any of those contacts a
victim has with the system can mean the difference between
recovery and continuing trauma. So we need to be really
sensitive about that. But we can do that. And I think that it
behooves victims for this country to make much more aggressive
and expansive use of DNA.
Mr. Chabot. Thank you.
Ms. Leary, if I could just follow up with you on another
issue that you already talked about to some extent, but that's
the issue of restitution. Is there anything that can be done on
the Federal level to help the States collect the victim
restitution that's been ordered? Is there anything that you can
think of that we might be able to do in that area?
Ms. Leary. Yeah, I think that there are a number of things
that could be done. First of all, the States, I believe, ought
to be able to intercept Federal income tax refunds for purposes
of State restitution orders. They can already do that for child
support, but they should be able to do the same thing with
Federal tax refunds.
In Colorado, their State tax refund intercept program gave
them $3 million in collections in 2005. And when we talked to
some of the folks in Colorado who run their really successful
State restitution program, they said, ``I can only imagine what
intercepting Federal tax returns would yield.''
And it's amazing how many of these defendants file joint
returns with their spouses, and even when money is taken from
the refunds, they continue to file joint returns. There's
potential there and it needs to be tapped.
The other thing is that restitution orders--well, in the
Federal arena, restitution orders right now are not final until
all the appeals are settled in Federal cases, and I think that
those restitution orders should be immediately enforceable.
Mr. Chabot. Thank you.
Let me ask a quick question about the victims' rights
constitutional amendment. It's always been disturbing to me
that the rights of the defendant are right there in the
Constitution, a whole series of things, but the victims are
nowhere there, and they're protected through statutes, either
Federal or State, but sometimes the Constitution that's
protecting the defendant is in conflict with the constitutional
rights of the accuser. You had mentioned, I think your
testimony was you don't necessarily--I think you're opposed to
the constitutional amendment, correct?
Ms. Lawrence. I've grappled with it over the last 10 years,
having worked for NOVA, which is one of its major advocates,
and felt for a while it was necessary. But I think when we look
first about why the constitutional issues are there is to deal
with governmental abuse, and that's why the protections are
there, to avoid somebody being wrongfully accused and
wrongfully convicted.
Mr. Chabot. But I thought in your testimony that----
Ms. Lawrence. Yeah, victims are not in that boat. I won't
say I'm entirely against it. I just think all the energy that
goes into trying to get these individual victims' rights
enforced, even though it's important, should go into trying to
transform a system that's been failing all along and will
continue to fail if we do not do something major to change our
basic approach.
Mr. Chabot. Since you had just touched on it, basically in
opposition, I thought perhaps we ought to have somebody else,
maybe Ms. Campbell, who might want to give her opinion relative
to the victims rights constitutional amendment, whether or not
we ought to at least at some point still push for that.
Ms. Campbell. I can't imagine any country, or anyone,
feeling that a criminal should have more rights than the
honest, law-abiding situation. It absolutely--looking at every
single angle, I cannot imagine supporting something like that.
Mr. Chabot. When you say supporting something like--you
mean, in other words----
Ms. Campbell. Supporting that the criminals have more
rights. I'm sorry. I didn't explain that well.
Mr. Chabot. No, that's okay.
Ms. Campbell. I mean we're like this. When I walk into a
courtroom today--and it depends what State you're in--every
State in America should be covered by constitutional rights for
the honest law-abiding citizen, not just the criminal having
the rights.
Mr. Chabot. So you do still believe that we should at some
point move forward----
Ms. Campbell. Absolutely, absolutely.
Mr. Chabot [continuing]. With the victims rights
constitution?
Ms. Campbell. Yeah. Yesterday in the courtroom----
Mr. Coble. The gentleman's time has expired.
Mr. Chabot. Thank you very much.
Mr. Coble. I think we have a vote on. I think we have time
for Mr. Gohmert to examine the witnesses. Mr. Gohmert.
Mr. Gohmert. Well, I'll be brief and just say thank you. As
a former judge and chief justice, I'm well familiar with the
plight.
And, Ms. Lawrence, thank you for not allowing the felon,
the criminal to assault you twice. As you know, as all of you
know, so often some violent criminal thug not only commits an
assault on a person and that person's family, but also allows
that assault to victimize them the rest of their lives, through
the grief, hate, anger, fear, combination of those that just
overshadows everything. So, obviously, you wouldn't be doing
what you were doing unless you knew that your actions helped
bring people out of the valley of the shadow of fear and anger
and hate and grief. So thank you for what you're doing. I
believe in what you're doing. I've seen firsthand.
I believe in our adversarial system. You know, with all its
faults, it is the best there is, but it doesn't mean we can't
improve it. And Texas has adopted a victims' bill of rights and
that helped some, but there's still work to be done, not only
in Texas but everywhere.
I applaud your efforts with regard to money. People need to
know there's not only a price to be paid by incarceration, but
also financially, and, you know, Ms. Leary, I think you're
right, even if they're in prison they can work, and even if
it's pennies, the family knows they're having to earn and work
and remember why it is they're doing that, and to pay back. But
as you all know, there's no amount of money that replaces what
a victim or the victim's family's been through, but it still
helps, and it helps with recovery.
So I applaud you, as someone who's been a witness to
destruction and sometimes as a judge, you know, your heart just
aches for the victim's family, and I would never, as a judge,
hold it against someone that they utilized their constitutional
rights. They have a right to the best defense they can get.
However, if someone is guilty and found guilty beyond a
reasonable doubt, then that means that what they put an
innocent victim through was an additional offense, and they
knew it as it occurred, and so that often found its way into
the additional sentence that may have been more harsh than if
they had put up a great defense, but not attacked a victim they
knew was not at fault.
So anyway, there are judges that think like that, and so,
you don't necessarily verbalize it so the victim understands
that the assault that occurred in the courtroom added to what
the sentence is, but it happens, for what that's worth.
But anyway, thank all of you for your work. I do think
that, Mr. Chairman, I applaud your having the hearing and
pushing this issue. I think that as a Federal Congress, we
ought to do something--and as you all talked about, and it
really makes me feel good to see you get the big picture too.
It's not only helping victims, but it's doing something to try
to keep that person from coming out of prison with nothing but
hate and additional knowledge about how to hurt people. So we
need to do a better job there.
I do have concerns about a Federal Congress dictating to
States what they have to do, because I am an advocate of
States' rights as well, but would hope that those States would
work on their own, and also look at our model, what we create
and do through our actions here.
But thank you. Obviously, a vote's on. But I can't tell you
adequately with words how much I appreciate what you're doing
for people an for victims.
Mr. Coble. I thank the gentleman from Texas.
We have conclude this----
Mr. Scott. If I may, Mr. Chairman. The tax returns, there's
also lottery tickets. If you owe fines, you can get your
lottery tickets--in fact, there was a report where a gentleman
who won a lottery ticket, went to cash it in, and just before
he went in, remembered he owes the State fines, so he had his
buddy go in and cash in the ticket. Unfortunately, as soon as
the buddy cashed it in, he owed child support. [Laughter.]
Ms. Leary. Great. You ought to be able to curtail what they
buy.
Mr. Coble. Folks, on that note, we'll conclude. Ladies,
we've got to go vote and I don't want to keep you all here. Ms.
Campbell, you have some other points to mention, and will list
them here. Thank you all for your contribution.
In order to ensure a full record and adequate consideration
of this important issue, the record will be left open for
additional submission for 7 days. So any written questions by
the Members to you also must be submitted within that 7-day
timeframe.
So you had other measures you wanted to share with us, Ms.
Campbell. If you don't mind, send those to us in writing, if
that would be okay with you.
This concludes the oversight hearing on Victims and the
Criminal Justice System: How to Protect, Compensate and
Vindicate the Interests of Victims.
Thank you all for your appearance today, and pardon us for
our abrupt departure, but we have to go vote. The Subcommittee
stands adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 11:16 a.m., the Subcommittee was adjourned.]