Popular cause, but victims’ rights faces new backlash
OKLAHOMA CITY — After his sister was slain and his mother ran into the accused killer, out on bail, in a grocery store a week later, California billionaire Henry Nicholas became a fierce advocate for the rights of crime victims.
He donated millions from his fortune as co-founder of tech giant Broadcom in Irvine, Orange County, to create a so-called “crime victims’ bill of rights”— dubbed Marsy’s Law after his slain sister Marsalee — and add it to the state’s constitution in 2008.
Now Nicholas is taking his crusade nationwide, with teams of lobbyists, public relations firms and high-powered political strategists converging on other state capitols for a similar push. But while the idea of standing up for crime victims is an easy sell politically, complaints are mounting that the initiative is becoming a testament to the danger of unintended consequences.
Not just defense lawyers, but some local prosecutors, police and victims’ advocates are concerned that the law’s extensive victim-notification requirements could impose crippling costs and administrative burdens on smaller towns and counties with limited resources. Supporters maintain those complaints are exaggerated and that any increased workload is worth the benefit of helping crime victims.
Still, law enforcement and victims’ advocates in some places are calling for its defeat or reversal.
“Our local government does not have enough money to operate and protect victims adequately already. Now we have these unfunded mandates that are coming through Marsy’s Law to local governments without the resources to pay for them,” said Leo Gallagher, county attorney in Lewis and Clark County, Mont.
Montana passed the measure in 2016, but the state’s Supreme Court recently tossed it out citing flaws in how it was written.
Marsy’s Law requires that crime victims be notified and heard in most criminal proceedings, receive protection and “full and timely” restitution and be allowed to confer with prosecutors. It also expands victims’ privacy rights and prohibits “unreasonable delay” of criminal cases.
The measure has been approved by voters in six states — California, Ohio, Illinois, Montana, North Dakota and South Dakota — and efforts have been launched in at least nine more.
Skeptics are trying to push back.
“When we first heard about it, we thought it was a nobrainer,” said Darla Juma, who runs the victims’ witness assistance program in two counties in North Dakota, where the ballot measure passed last year. “But there are counties that don’t have a victims’ advocate, and now they’re having to send notices, notify victims. Who’s going to pay for that work?”