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DALE McFEATTERS: Messing with the Constitution
Josey1
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Opinions: DALE McFEATTERS: Messing with the Constitution
Copyright c 2002
Scripps Howard News Service
Search for more columns by: Dale McFeatters
(April 17, 2002 3:25 p.m. EDT) President Bush has resurrected a bad idea - a victims' rights amendment to the Constitution.
It's no accident that this feel-good approach to crime surfaces during election years. The amendment was last an issue in 1996, when it was endorsed by candidates Clinton and Dole. Once the campaign was over, this needless tinkering with the Constitution was quietly and mercifully forgotten. Now it's back.
Bush touted the amendment in an appearance at the Justice Department. The crowd, many of whom were attorneys, should be ashamed for applauding his false analogy, "As we protect the rights of criminals, we must take equal care to protect the rights of the victims." The Constitution protects the rights of the accused. The only right it gives criminals is the one against cruel and unusual punishment. Further, the Bill of Rights protects the people from the power of the government, not from each other.
The backers of this amendment should consider this: Maybe the Founding Fathers, who seemed to have anticipated every other contingency, felt it unnecessary to spell out a separate class of rights for "victims."
The provisions in the amendment contain nothing that Congress and the state legislatures couldn't enact tomorrow. Many states - which is where this issue belongs - already have, giving crime victims the right to restitution, protection against intimidation and to speak out at specified stages of the criminal justice process - sentencing, pleas, pardons, release. Some of the provisions - speedy trials, advance notification - require money and manpower, neither of them provided by the amendment.
Bush spoke of how in 2000 Americans were the victims of 6.3 million crimes, but nothing in this amendment would affect the crime rate.
While a federal law might be crafted that didn't clash with or override existing state and local victims' rights laws and court procedures, that's tough to do in a constitutional amendment. And the federal courts would be further overburdened by having to define a new class of rights. As defined by the president, the amendment is filled with language - "reasonable," "unreasonable," "timely," "compelling" - that invites litigation.
Bush spoke movingly of the work done by public and private victims' rights advocates and support groups. Their work is vital and it is a proper government function to encourage and support that work. But this does not merit changing a Constitution that has needed amending only 18 times in over two centuries.
http://www.nandotimes.com/opinions/story/365540p-2955846c.html
"If cowardly and dishonorable men sometimes shoot unarmed men with army pistols or guns, the evil must be prevented by the penitentiary and gallows, and not by a general deprivation of a constitutional privilege." - Arkansas Supreme Court, 1878
Copyright c 2002
Scripps Howard News Service
Search for more columns by: Dale McFeatters
(April 17, 2002 3:25 p.m. EDT) President Bush has resurrected a bad idea - a victims' rights amendment to the Constitution.
It's no accident that this feel-good approach to crime surfaces during election years. The amendment was last an issue in 1996, when it was endorsed by candidates Clinton and Dole. Once the campaign was over, this needless tinkering with the Constitution was quietly and mercifully forgotten. Now it's back.
Bush touted the amendment in an appearance at the Justice Department. The crowd, many of whom were attorneys, should be ashamed for applauding his false analogy, "As we protect the rights of criminals, we must take equal care to protect the rights of the victims." The Constitution protects the rights of the accused. The only right it gives criminals is the one against cruel and unusual punishment. Further, the Bill of Rights protects the people from the power of the government, not from each other.
The backers of this amendment should consider this: Maybe the Founding Fathers, who seemed to have anticipated every other contingency, felt it unnecessary to spell out a separate class of rights for "victims."
The provisions in the amendment contain nothing that Congress and the state legislatures couldn't enact tomorrow. Many states - which is where this issue belongs - already have, giving crime victims the right to restitution, protection against intimidation and to speak out at specified stages of the criminal justice process - sentencing, pleas, pardons, release. Some of the provisions - speedy trials, advance notification - require money and manpower, neither of them provided by the amendment.
Bush spoke of how in 2000 Americans were the victims of 6.3 million crimes, but nothing in this amendment would affect the crime rate.
While a federal law might be crafted that didn't clash with or override existing state and local victims' rights laws and court procedures, that's tough to do in a constitutional amendment. And the federal courts would be further overburdened by having to define a new class of rights. As defined by the president, the amendment is filled with language - "reasonable," "unreasonable," "timely," "compelling" - that invites litigation.
Bush spoke movingly of the work done by public and private victims' rights advocates and support groups. Their work is vital and it is a proper government function to encourage and support that work. But this does not merit changing a Constitution that has needed amending only 18 times in over two centuries.
http://www.nandotimes.com/opinions/story/365540p-2955846c.html
"If cowardly and dishonorable men sometimes shoot unarmed men with army pistols or guns, the evil must be prevented by the penitentiary and gallows, and not by a general deprivation of a constitutional privilege." - Arkansas Supreme Court, 1878