barbtries a blog: <a href="http://www.madd.org/news/0,1056,3490,00.html">MADD Online: Blind Injustice: Violations of Victims' Rights</a>

Saturday, October 11, 2003

MADD Online: Blind Injustice: Violations of Victims' Rights

"Blind Injustice: Violations of Victims' Rights
MADDvocate, Winter 1998

You will find the following hard to believe. More than theory, these true stories highlight the need for an Amendment to the U.S. Constitution to assure victims' rights.

In a state with both a statutory Victims' Bill of Rights and a State Constitutional Amendment for victims' rights, a widow had to go to extraordinary means to attend the trial of her husband's killer. By chance, an advocate met the woman and suggested that she hire a private attorney to motion the to court on her behalf to attend the trial. Originally, the defense attorney argued that the mere presence of the widow at the trial would cause her Victim Imp act Statement to be inflammatory and prejudicial to his client. When the private attorney filed his motion, the defense argued that he had no standing in criminal court since he represented neither the defendant nor the state. At this point, the prosecutor joined the private attorney in the motion. The judge then agreed to look at the state's victims' rights law, and when he did, agreed that she had the right to attend the trial and give a Victim Impact Statement.

The family of a young father killed by a drunk driver closely followed the case because they knew the judge was a close personal friend of the defense attorney. After the trial and sentencing, without notifying the family or the prosecutor, the judge reduced the sentence to 30 days of shock probation. The offender avoided paying restitution or doing anything for the victim family or the community.

In a serious injury case, the prosecutor told the victim's father that he was not going to request jail time for the defendant. The father was angry, and then the prosecutor became angry. He kicked a desk, spat on the father and called him a son-of-a-bitch.

A prosecutor realized he was required to give an injured pedestrian some information. He reluctantly called the victim and told her, 'be at the courthouse at 1:00 and don't bring anyone with you.'~ When she arrived, the prosecutor took her into a back room alone and berated her for being in the road when she was struck by a drunk driver. A prosecutor objected to the presence of a MADD advocate in court and referred to her as 'that reprehensible blonde.'

A mother and her six-year-old were struck by an underage driver. She was not kept informed of the progress of the case. She called the prosecutor to find out when the sentencing was going to take place. The prosecutor told her the sentencing was 'tomorrow.' When she expressed her dismay at the nearness of the sentencing, he replied, 'I'm just kidding. I don't know when it is; I figured you'd tell me.'

An 11-year-old child chose to give an oral Victim Impact Statement after her father pled guilty to child endangerment for driving drunk with her in the car. The defense attorney attacked and ridiculed her Statement, requiring her to stand up as he did it. The prosecutor did not object to the defense's treatment of this child. A victim traveled to the county in which the defendant was to be sentenced nine times, each time incurring travel and hotel expenses only to learn that the sentencing had been postponed. The prosecuting attorney's victim advocate had not found time to call him. Eventually, the sentencing was scheduled, but the defense attorney offered the victim $20,000 if he would not come to court that day. The victim has asked the prosecutor to pursue charges against the attorney, but so far she has declined.

A woman was hit by a drunk driver, hospitalized four months, and is now permanently disabled. Without notifying her or her family, the court sentenced the drunk driver to 30 days in jail, 27 suspended, and to a $500 fine, $250 suspended. The judge also said that if the drunk driver agreed to attend alcohol awareness classes, the fine would be reduced to $125.

and in CA, the family of a 21-year-old victim was lied to and subjected to at least one hour's worth of "spin" as the murder case against their loved one's killer was dismissed and the killer was allowed to plead "no contest" to two lesser felonies, for which she was handed the minimum sentence.

the IMPACT statement i delivered to the back of rambo's head on 02-15-02:
My daughter's name is Rebekah-Marie Bales Zask. We call her Bekah. I am here today to remind the court, the attorneys, any other interested parties, and the defendant in this case that Bekah lived.

She was a human being, barely 21 years old. She walked and talked and thought and felt and ate and drank and loved and laughed and learned and danced and drove and cried and cared, about a lot of things. But more than anything Bekah cared about people. She respected people and the sanctity of life. She appreciated that life is a precious gift. And Bekah was happy in her life.

Bekah was not this nameless unmentioned "victim" "decedent" "fatality" until while crossing a street in San Pedro on July 19, 2001, she was killed by Lynn Woolever. A healthy 21-year-old woman was taken out of her shoes, dragged down the street, run over, and dumped in a huge pool of blood to die as her killer drove home. The defendant left some of my daughter's grey matter on 25th Street and took some more of it, along with hairs from her head and plenty of her blood, home with her, where she went to sleep.

Killed Bekah; went to sleep.

Since July 19, 2001 I have done almost nothing but mourn my only daughter. My grief has been intensified because Bekah was killed at the hands of this defendant. Woolever has exhibited nothing but contempt for an innocent 21-year-old woman who never did anything to deserve it.

The contempt with which this person killed my only daughter baffles me and keeps me asking why months after logic has convinced me I will never know. And just as unfathomable as why to me is how:

How could you keep driving after the head of a young woman shattered the windshield right in front of your face?
How could you drive on after hearing the blood-curdling scream that was the last sound ever to come from my daughter?
How did you get home up that dark winding road if you were too intoxicated and angry to stay in your lane on 25th Street?
How could you sleep after killing Bekah?!
If you just had to kill someone, I'll volunteer. I would gladly die rather than to survive my only girl and be forced to live with the terrible knowledge of how she died. I've had my children, lived more than twice as long. Kill me instead. Let my daughter live.
Obviously I cannot choose to die in place of Bekah. And Bekah cannot choose to stay alive and fulfill all of her promise to this world or realize its promises to her. Bekah celebrated her 21st birthday thirteen days before she died all alone in the middle of the street, so gruesomely we were excused from identifying her body and precluded from having an open casket at her funeral. You are 32 years older than Bekah was - almost 33 years older than she will ever get to be, because of the choices you made last July 19. Now you have chosen to volunteer for four years in prison rather than to stand trial for the crime I firmly believe you committed that evening.

During the minutes, hours, days, and months since her death I have looked to the Court for justice for my daughter, Rebekah-Marie Bales Zask. This result falls far short in my opinion. Lynn Woolever ended Bekah's life violently, senselessly, with no more respect for her victim than if she had stepped on a bug. The defendant's actions before, during, and since Bekah's death, I believe illustrate "an abandoned and malignant heart," such that I have no doubt that this woman murdered my daughter.

As helpless as I am to bring Bekah back to life, so it appears that I'm equally incapable of procuring justice for her death. I cannot choose to die instead of Bekah; I cannot choose for you to die instead of Bekah; I cannot choose how to adjudicate the "People's" case against Lynn Mary Woolever. All I can choose is my words, and no words will ever suffice to express the scope and the magnitude of your crime when you killed my only daughter, Rebekah-Marie Bales Zask. Bekah

[The last part is paraphrased, because it was ad-libbed. It was only finally that morning that we did learn for a certainty that the terms of the plea bargain had been misrepresented to us]

Your honor, that was to be the end of my statement. But I only recently learned that the amount of time the defendant will spend in prison was misrepresented to us as eighty percent when in reality it is only fifty percent. If you have been made to believe that Bekah Zask's family is okay with this agreement you have been misinformed. Consequently I must beg you to please sentence this woman to at least six years, so that she does the amount of time the family of the victim was led to believe she would do, or you throw the bargain out and let her be tried for the crime I still believe a jury will agree that she committed.

Thank you your honor.

- posted by barbara @ 10/11/2003 06:04:00 PM

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