Washington Post Editorial
April 24, 2000

THE SENATE is expected soon to take up a victims rights amendment to the Constitution. The laudable goal is to protect the interests of victims of violent crime in proceedings affecting them. But the amendment by Sens. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) and Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), now gaining support, threatens both prosecutorial interests and the rights of the accused. It should be rejected.

The measure would give victims the right to be notified of any public proceedings arising from the offense against them, to be present at such hearings and to testify when the issues are parole, plea agreements or sentencing. Victims would be notified of the release or escape of a perpetrator or any consideration of executive clemency. They would also be entitled to orders of restitution and to consideration of their interest in speedy trials.

Many of these protections already exist in statute. But the rights of victims properly are bounded under the Constitution by the need to guarantee defendants a fair trial. A defendant's right to a fair trial, for example, should not depend on a victim's interest in seeing justice swiftly done. It may sound perverse to elevate the rights of defendants often correctly accused of crimes above those of their victims. But rights of the accused flow out of the fact that the government is seeking to deprive them of liberty--or, in some cases, life. In doing so, it already is representing the interests of their victims in seeing justice done.

The Clinton administration backs a constitutional amendment (though it has troubles with the specific language in the current proposal), but it is also worth noting that some prosecutors believe the amendment would hurt law enforcement. Beth Wilkinson, one of the prosecutors in the Oklahoma City bombing case, wrote in these pages last year that "our prosecution could have been substantially impaired had the constitutional amendment now under consideration been in place." The fundamental right of victims is to have government pursue justice on their--and the larger society's--behalf. To interfere with that in the victims' own name would be wrongheaded in the extreme.