THE WHITE HOUSE
Office of the Press Secretary
______________________________________________________________________
For Immediate Release June 25, 1996
REMARKS BY THE PRESIDENT
AT ANNOUNCEMENT OF VICTIMS' RIGHTS CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT
The Rose Garden
12:11 A.M. EDT
THE PRESIDENT: Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and
let me thank you all for being here. Thank you, Senator Kyl and
Senator Feinstein, for your ground-breaking work here. Thank you,
Senator Exon; my longtime friend, Senator Heflin. Thank you,
Congressman Frost, Congressman Stupack, Congressman Orton.
I thank all the representatives here of the victims
community, the law enforcement community. I thank the Attorney
General and John Schmidt and Aileen Adams and Bonnie Campbell for
doing such a fine job at the Justice Department on all criminal
justice issues. I thank the Vice President and, especially, I want
to thank Roberta Roper and the other members of the National Movement
for Victims' Advocacy. And, Mr. Roper, thank you for coming. Thank
you, John and Pat Byron; thank you, Mark Klaas; and thank you, Pam
McClain. And especially, John Walsh, thank you for spending all of
these years to bring these issues to America's attention. Thank you,
sir. (Applause.)
I'd also like to say a special word of thanks to the
person who did more than any other person in the United States to
talk me through all of the legal and practical matters that have to
be resolved in order for the President to advocate amending our
Constitution: former prosecutor and a former colleague of mine,
Governor Bob Miller of Nevada. Thank you, sir, for your work here.
(Applause.)
For years, we have worked to make our criminal justice
system more effective, more fair, more even-handed, more vigilant in
the protection of the innocent. Today, the system bends over
backwards to protect those who may be innocent, and that is as it
should be. But it too often ignores the millions and millions of
people who are completely innocent because they're victims, and that
is wrong; that is what we are trying to correct today.
When someone is a victim, he or she should be at the
center of the criminal justice process, not on the outside looking
in. Participation in all forms of government is the essence of
democracy. Victims should be guaranteed the right to participate in
proceedings related to crimes committed against them. People accused
of crimes have explicit constitutional rights. Ordinary citizens
have a constitutional right to participate in criminal trials by
serving on a jury. The press has a constitutional right to attend
trials. All of this is as it should be. It is only the victims of
crime who have no constitutional right to participate, and that is
not the way it should be. (Applause.)
Having carefully studied all of the alternatives, I am
now convinced that the only way to fully safeguard the rights of
victims in America is to amend our Constitution and guarantee these
basic rights -- to be told about public court proceedings and to
attend them; to make a statement to the court about bail, about
sentencing, about accepting a plea if the victim is present, to be
told about parole hearings to attend and to speak; notice when the
defendant or convict escapes or is released, restitution from the
defendant, reasonable protection from the defendant and notice of
these rights.
If you have ever been a victim of a violent crime, it
probably wouldn't even occur to you that these rights could be denied
if you've never been a victim. But, actually, it happens time and
time again. It happens in spite of the fact that the victims' rights
movement in America has been an active force for about 20 years now.
The wife of a murdered state trooper in Maryland is left
crying outside the courtroom for the entire trial of her husband's
killers, because the defense subpoenaed her as a witness just to keep
her out, and never even called her. A rape victim in Florida isn't
notified when her rapist is released on parole. He finds her and
kills her.
Last year in New Jersey, Jakiyah McClain was sexually
assaulted and brutally murdered. She had gone to visit a friend and
never came home. Police found her in the closet of an abandoned
apartment; now, her mother wants to use a New Jersey law that gives
the murder victims' survivors the right to address a jury deciding on
the death penalty. She wants the jury to know more about this fine
young girl than the crime scene reports. She wants them to know that
Jakiyah was accepted into a school for gifted children the day before
she died. But a New Jersey judge decided she can't testify even
though the state law gave her the right to do so. He ruled that the
defendant's constitutional right to a fair trial required him to
strike to law down.
Well, Jakiyah's mother had the courage to overcome her
pain to be with us today. We have to change this for her and for
other victims in America. Thank you, and God bless you. (Applause.)
The only way to give victims equal and due consideration
is to amend the Constitution. For nearly 20 years I have been
involved in the fight for victims' rights since I was attorney
general in my home state. We passed laws then to guarantee victims'
rights to attend trials and to get restitutions, and later to get
notice and to participate in parole hearings.
Over all those years, I learned what every victim of
crime knows too well: As long as the rights of the accused are
protected but the rights of victims are not, time and again, the
victims will lose.
When a judge balances defendants' rights in the Federal
Constitution against victims' rights in a statute or a state
constitution, the defendants' rights almost always prevail. That's
just how the law works today. We want to level the playing field.
This is not about depriving people accused of crimes of their
legitimate rights, including the presumption of innocence; this is
about simple fairness. When a judge balances the rights of the
accused and the rights of the victim, we want the rights of the
victim to get equal weight. When a plea bargain is entered in
public, a criminal is sentenced, a defendant is let out on bail, the
victim ought to know about it and ought to have a say.
I want to work with the Congressional leadership, the
House and Senate Judiciary Committees, including Senators Kyl and
Feinstein and Chairman Hyde and law enforcement officials, to craft
the best possible amendment. It should guarantee victims' rights in
every court in the land -- federal, state, juvenile, and military.
(Applause.) It should be self-executing so that it takes effect as
soon as it's ratified without additional legislation. Congress
will take responsibility to enforce victims' rights in federal
courts, and the states will keep responsibility to enforce them in
state courts, but we need the amendment.
I also want to say, just before I go forward, again I
want to thank Senators Kyl and Feinstein and the others who have
approached this in a totally bipartisan manner. (Applause.) This is
a cause for all Americans. When people are victimized, the criminal
almost never asks before you're robbed or beaten or raped or
murdered: Are you a Republican or a Democrat? This is a matter of
national security just as much as the national security issues beyond
our borders on which we try to achieve a bipartisan consensus. And I
applaud the nonpolitical and patriotic way in which this manner has
been approached in the Congress, just like it's approached every day
in the country -- and we ought to do our best to keep it that way.
We know that there can be, with any good effort,
unforeseen consequences. We think we know what they would likely be
and we believe we know how to guard against them. We certainly don't
want to make it harder for prosecutors to convict violent criminals.
We sure don't want to give criminals like gang members, who may be
victims of their associates, any way to take advantage of these
rights just to slow the criminal justice process down.
We want to protect victims, not accidentally help
criminals. But we can solve these problems. The problems are not an
excuse for inaction. We still have to go forward.
Of course amending the Constitution can take a long
time. It may take years. And while we work to amend it, we must do
everything in our power to enhance the protection of victims' rights
now. Today I'm directing the Attorney General to hold the federal
system to a higher standard than ever before, to guarantee maximum
participation by victims under existing law and to review existing
legislation to see what further changes we ought to make.
I'll give you an example. There ought to be, I believe,
in every law, federal and state, a protection for victims who
participate in the criminal justice process not to be discriminated
against on the job because they have to take time off. That
protection today is accorded to jury members; it certainly ought to
extend to people who are victims who need to be in the criminal
justice process. And we shouldn't wait for that kind of thing to be
done. (Applause.)
I want investigators and prosecutors to take the
strongest steps to include victims. I want work to begin immediately
to launch a computerized system so victims get information about new
developments in a case, in changes in the status or the location of a
defendant or a convict.
I do not support amending the Constitution lightly; it
is sacred. It should be changed only with great caution and after
much consideration. But I reject the idea that it should never be
changed. Change it lightly and you risk its distinction. But never
change it and you risk its vitality.
I have supported the goals of many constitutional
amendments since I took office, but in each amendment that has been
proposed during my tenure as President, I have opposed the amendment
either because it was not appropriate or not necessary. But this is
different. I want to balance the budget, for example, but the
Constitution already gives us the power to do that. What we need is
the will and to work together to do that. I want young people to be
able to express their religious convictions in an appropriate manner
wherever they, even in a school, but the Constitution protects
people's rights to express their faith.
But this is different. This is not an attempt to put
legislative responsibilities in the Constitution or to guarantee a
right that is already guaranteed. Amending the Constitution here is
simply the only way to guarantee the victims' rights are weighted
equally with defendants' rights in every courtroom in America.
Two hundred twenty years ago, our Founding Fathers were
concerned, justifiably, that government never, never trample on the
rights of people just because they are accused of a crime. Today,
it's time for us to make sure that while we continue to protect the
rights of the accused, government does not trample on the rights of
the victims. (Applause.)
Until these rights are also enshrined in our
Constitution, the people who have been hurt most by crime will
continue to be denied equal justice under law. That's what this
country is really all about -- equal justice under law. And crime
victims deserve that as much as any group of citizens in the United
States ever will.
Thank you, God bless you, and God bless America.
(Applause.)
END 12:25 P.M. EDT
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