In the wake of recent sexual harassment news, Prof. Bennett L. Gershman, of the Elisabeth Haub School of Law at Pace University, argues that private civil settlements that involve non-disclosure should be illegal.
BY: Laurence Banville, Esq., trial attorney and founding partner at Banville Law, a plaintiffs’ law firm based in New York City.
At the dawn of the U.S. legal system, victims were central – indeed, the essential element – in the prosecution of crimes. Criminal investigations, criminal proceedings and restitution efforts were private, that is, they were initiated and pursued by those who had been harmed. Crime had not yet been framed as an offence against the state, or society, but was viewed as a failure of individuals and a violation of interpersonal relationships. Before the Revolution, an active role in the criminal justice process was not a privilege granted to victims; rather, it was their responsibility. This regime, drawn almost entirely from English common law, considered only one crime as an offence against the state: treason.
This is a system of justice we would hardly recognize today, one in which the domains of criminal and civil law were nearly indistinguishable. It was not fated to last. With the American Revolution came fundamental changes in the understanding of crime, leading to the birth of what today we would call the modern U.S. criminal justice system.
Having established their sovereignty, the colonies quickly recognized that new social groups, with their own interests and vulnerabilities, had been born. Soon, public prosecutors were appointed, with burgeoning bureaucracies to follow. Crimes themselves came to be seen no longer as offenses against the individual, but as a form of harm against society. By the 19th century, private criminal prosecutions had been “entirely eliminated,” according to Mary Boland, currently one of the foremost legal advocates for victim’s rights and co-chair of the American Bar Association’s Victim’s Committee. As time passed, the victim fell out of the criminal process’s view, until victims were little more than vehicles for the presentation of evidence assembled at the state’s pleasure.
It was not until the 1960s that the victim, as an individual with rights and interests, would again come into focus. The social revolutions of the 1960s led to a feeling of social instability that itself led to concerns with the issue of crime, and victim’s rights groups emerged. Because of a shared experience of oppression and vulnerability, champions of the Civil Rights Movement and the Feminist Movement coalesced around an understanding of criminal justice that emphasized victims’ rights. Crucially, calls for reform from progressive quarters were joined by similar ones from the conservative law and order movement, which urged renewed attention on the failings of the criminal justice system to combat rising crime rates.
A full-throated crime victims’ rights movement emerged in the 1970s, galvanized by the 1973 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Linda R.S. v Richard D., in which the Court affirmed, in dicta, that victims cannot compel criminal prosecution because “a private citizen lacks a judicially cognizable interest in the prosecution or non-prosecution of another.”
Meanwhile, grassroots organizing led to the creation of domestic violence and rape crisis centers across the Nation, organizations that would come to form the backbone of a vocal national coalition. Reactionary impulses were also at work. In 1975, Rule 615 of the Federal Rules of Evidence was enacted, requiring courts to exclude witnesses, including victims, from the courtroom on the request of either prosecution or defense. Understandably, this has been widely cited as the low-water-mark in the battle to reintegrate victims into criminal proceedings. At the same time, the justice system had begun to realize that treating victims as valuable participants in proceedings was not contrary to, but supportive of, its own aims.
In 1974, Donald E. Santarelli, then-Director of the Federal Law Enforcement Assistance Administration, became acquainted with the work of Frank Cannavale. In his book Witness Cooperation, Cannavale argued forcefully that the loss of cooperative witnesses, victims who had become fed up with a justice system seemingly uninterested in their own needs, was the primary cause of prosecution failure. Santarelli was instrumental in funding the first victim and witness assistance pilot projects, including one in Denver’s District Attorney’s Office, which often went far beyond notifying victims of important court dates. In collaboration with grassroots organizers, a quickly-growing roster of victims’ assistance programs began offering crisis intervention services and on-call help lines. Likewise, prosecutors started to seek out and consider victims’ opinions on bail determinations, plea bargains, sentencing and parole hearings.
After his inauguration in 1981, President Ronald Reagan soon established the President’s Task Force on Victims of Crime. In its December 1982 final report, the Task Force acknowledged what many members of the public already knew: “[T]he innocent victims of crime have been overlooked, their pleas for justice have gone unheeded, and their wounds – personal, emotional, financial – have gone unattended.” As a starting point, the Task Force recommended a Constitutional Amendment that would enshrine the rights of victims.
While that has not yet happened, the crime victims’ rights movement has spurred enormous legislative successes. To date, 33 states have ratified constitutional amendments enlarging the rights of crime victims, according to the National Crime Victim Law Institute at Lewis & Clark Law School. The remaining states have all passed legislation on the subject. In 1982, Congress enacted the Victim and Witness Protection Act, granting federal courts the authority to award restitution to victims as part of a defendant’s sentence. The Victims of Crime Act of 1984 established the Office for Victims of Crime and the Crime Victim’s Fund, which compensates victims for a variety of crime-related losses.
While certainly welcomed, these initial legislative measures were often criticized for focusing disproportionately on financial remuneration at the expense of victims’ other needs. The Crime Victims’ Rights Act of 2004 went further, effectively granting victims a participatory role in criminal proceedings. The Act enumerated eight rights to which victims are entitled in federal criminal cases:
Unfortunately, in the view of many advocates, the promise of inclusion heralded by the Crime Victims’ Rights Act has remained illusory. These rights are rarely enforced, says Mary Boland. The National Crime Victim Law Institute has called them “paper promises.”
Recent years have seen a new, double movement, in which the individualization of victims and their increasing impact on criminal justice proceedings is matched by efforts to individualize offenders and promote rehabilitative strategies over punitive measures. This is different from the movement of the 1970s that posited victims’ rights in opposition to defendants’ rights. Within this emerging regime, the lives of victims and offenders are no longer isolated from one another and the rights of one do not depend on limiting the rights of the other. In many ways, both parties to crime share the same path. It is not a paradox that, under many alternative theories of justice, the state should once again fall into the background, much as it did before the Revolution. The movement for restorative justice, a concept that has come to prominence since the late 1970s, focuses on minimizing the state’s role in proceedings, focusing instead on victim-offender mediation.
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We all were in the situation when we are looking for criminal justice related statistics without knowing where to look or where to even begin. No more. Hall of Justice, a project of the Sunlight Foundations, is trying to change that. Although not comprehensive, it contains nearly 10,000 datasets and research documents from all 50 jurisdictions, DC, US territories, and federal government. Its newly launched website offers searchable inventory of publicly available criminal justice statistics and documents in one convenient place, thereby improving transparency.
The project explains its methodology in how and which datasets are included. You can learn more about the Sunlight Foundation criminal justice work here and the spreadsheet of datasets is available here.
Users may search for available datasets and then narrow by state, groups, sectors (government, non-profit, private, etc.), and access type (not machine readable, open, restricted, closed, etc.). The results display in a table listing the state/location, category, dataset title, group issuing the dataset, years included, and the direct link to access it. The major categories include: Corrections, Courts, Crime, Financial, Juvenile Justice, Law Enforcement, Victims, and Miscellaneous. All categories are further divided into subcategories.
For example, the result page looks as follows (look to the left) when looking for Juvenile Justice – Delinquents datasets for the state of NY, listing 5 results with live links where the listed statistics can be accessed.
POST WRITTEN BY: Syed Alam (’17), J.D. Pace Law School
According to the ICRC Principles of Distinction between Civilians and Combatants Rule 1, one of the pillars of international humanitarian law permits military commanders to direct operations against military objectives. At the same time, however, Rule 1 also requires that military commanders distinguish between civilian and military object. This concept was already codified in St. Petersburg Declaration of 1868, which states that States engaging in a war should only commit acts that will help them to weaken the military forces of the enemy party.
It is the duty of the military commander to determine who civilians are and who military opponents are. At time of war, every military force faces a threat from their opponent; however, it hardly faces threats from civilians. Thus, civilians should not be harmed during any war. It is the duty of the military commander to take such steps and measures as to prevent harm to civilians.
How do we define civilians? According to article 50(1) of the Additional Protocol 1 of the Geneva Conventions, 1949, civilians are the persons who do not belong to one of the categories mentioned in articles 4(A)(1)-(3) and 4(A)(6) of the Third Geneva Convention 1949. The categories listed are member of armed forces, member of militias or member of volunteer corps. A person who by any act is not facilitating or acting as part of the armed conflict is a civilian. Additionally, as held by the criminal tribunal in Blaskić, “[i]n case of doubt whether a person is a civilian, that person shall be considered to be a civilian.” Prosecutor v. Tihomir Blaskic, Case No. IT-95-14-A, Judgement, ¶ 111 (Int’l Crim. Trib. for the Former Yugoslavia Jul 29, 2004).
According to article 50(3) of the Protocol 1 of the Geneva Conventions 1949, even if a civilian population includes some armed people, still they do not lose their civilian status. For example, if militants enter a park filled with civilians – an attack cannot be launched in the park even if intended to only target the militants because under the principle of distinction the civilians ought to be protected. The criminal tribunal in Prosecutor v. Stanislav Galić further confirmed this principle and held that “[a] population may qualify as ‘civilian’ even if non-civilians are among it, as long as the population is predominantly civilian.” Prosecutor v. Stanislav Galić, Case No. IT-98-29-A, Judgement, ¶ 143 (Int’l Crim. Trib. for Former Yugoslavia Nov. 30, 2006).
According to article 51 of the Protocol 1 of the Geneva Conventions 1949, the protections civilian enjoy during wartime include:
Under article 8 of the Rome Statute, war crime includes grave breaches of Geneva Conventions of 1949 and also violation of any laws and customs of international laws regarding international armed conflict. As discussed above, Geneva Convention of 1949 made it a crime to kill civilians during war. Article 8 of the Rome Statute re-affirms that position. Thus, killing civilians during war is a war crime.
Although international authorities put forth effort to protect civilians, the history speaks for itself – civilians are often not spared. Although, adequate international laws are in place, States engaged in war often overlook this principle of distinction. The law appears clear – civilian killing in war is a crime. The question then is why these international laws are ignored? States have often used the term ‘collateral damage’ to justify the killing of civilians. However, human life is priceless and no cause is big enough to spare innocent human life. The United Nations should find a way to enforce the international laws addressing civilian killing in war for the sake of humanity.
POST WRITTEN BY: Maria Dollas (’16), J.D. Pace Law School
Often, there are no witnesses to a crime other than the victim. Given the stress and state of the victim the question arises whether such conditions affect this lone witness’s ability to accurately recall the assailant. Things become more muddied when the police apprehend an assailant (not necessarily THE assailant who committed the crime in question) and the police proceed to do more than to merely present the alleged assailant to the victim.
In a 3-1 majority the Appellate Division Second Department recently held that the use of showup identification by police was unduly suggestive and that the victim’s identification testimony should have been suppressed. People v. James, ___ N.Y.S.3d ___ 2015 N.Y. Slip Op. 03864 (App. Div. 2d Dep’t May 6, 2015).
The discrepancy in the attributes of the person the victim described and the person actually caught were significant: they varied in age, height, and attire. The victim described her assailant as about 20 years old, 6 feet tall, wearing a brown and white striped shirt. The person apprehended by police was 13 years older and 4 inches shorter. A striped shirt of a different color combination, in this case a red-and-blue striped shirt was found near a parked vehicle and not on his person. Nonetheless, the police presented the person apprehended in handcuffs to the victim. That alone might have signaled guilt. It was particularly suspicious since the person arrested was walking shirtless in the area.
Still, the victim was not able to identify her assailant. It was only when the police purposely placed the miscolored striped shirt across the defendant’s chest that that the victim conceded that he was her assailant. The victim did not request the shirt to be placed upon the apprehended individual. Initially, she could not and did not identify him. It was only after the police officer took active steps that the victim said he was the one.
There is no doubt that the crime was committed. There is however doubt as to the reasonableness of the police tactics in presenting the apprehended individual to the victim. Showups and other identification procedures are not to be so unduly suggestive as to violate due process. The primary evil to be avoided is a “very substantial likelihood of irreparable misidentification.” Simmons v. United States, 390 U.S. 377, 384 (1968).
The law is not concerned with the number of witnesses but rather with the quality of the identification given. Even a slight deviation from permitting the victim to objectively determine whether the person presented to her as the assailant taints the process. The circumstances in this case are not free from coaxing the victim even so slightly as to whether the right shirt and therefore the right person is in custody.
Additionally, the identification here may have been a cross-racial one: the assailant was described as a light skinned black male, the victim was only described as a 22 year old female and her skin color was not noted. Ordinary human experience indicates that some people have greater difficulty in identifying members of a different race than they do in identifying members of their own race. See Gary L. Wells & Elizabth A. Olson, The Other-Race Effect in Eyewitness Identification: What Do We Do About It?, 7 Psychol., Pub. Pol’y & L. 230 (2001). Here, an already challenging identification may have been even more problematic by irresponsible police tactics.
The people’s burden is not only to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that a crime was committed but justice requires that the defendant is indeed the person who committed the crime. One person wrongly identified is one person too many whose liberty and life may be irrevocably altered because of the procedural missteps of others. Misidentification and its consequences can also happen to you and me.
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