Supreme Court Decisions Directly Affecting Victims
Decisions Advancing Victims’ Interests and Rights
Victimized Children Can Testify via Closed-Circuit Television In 1990, in a 5–4 decision (Maryland v. Craig), the Supreme Court held that it was constitutional for a state to pass a law that shields a child who accuses an adult of sexual abuse from a face- to-face confrontation during a trial. The child’s testimony and the defense attorney’s cross-examination can take place in another room and can be shown to the jury over closed-circuit television if the prosecutor can convince the judge that the young witness would be traumatized by having to testify in the defendant’s presence. The majority felt that the state’s interest in the physical and psychological well-being of the abused child may outweigh the defendant’s Sixth Amendment right to face his or her accuser in person (Greenhouse, 1990).
Rape Victims’ Past Experiences Can Be Kept out of Court In 1991, the Supreme Court ruled by a 7–2 vote that the rape shield laws passed in all 50 states were constitutional. The laws allow judges to suppress as irrelevant attempts by the defense to introduce allegations about past sexual experi- ences of rape victims (Rauber, 1991).
Victim Impact Statements Can Be Used in Capital Cases In 1987 (Booth v. Maryland), the Supreme Court overturned a death sentence because the jury during the penalty phase of the trial heard a particularly heartrending impact statement about how the murder of an elderly couple shattered the lives of three generations of their family. The majority ruled that the use of such inflammatory impact statements created a constitutionally unacceptable risk that juries might impose the death penalty in an arbitrary and capricious manner, swayed by the social standing and reputation of the deceased person. The majority believed that the victim’s worth was not an appropriate factor for a jury to consider when weighing the killer’s fate—imprisonment or execution—because it would undermine the guarantee of equal protection (Triebwasser, 1987b). But in 1991 (Payne v. Tennessee), the Court reversed itself and ruled that prosecutors could introduce victim impact statements and that the survivors of murder victims could testify. The majority held that courts have always taken into account the harm done by defendants when determining appropriate sentences (Clark and Block, 1992).
Victims’ 911 Emergency Calls Can Be Used as Evidence If They Can’t Testify at a Trial In 2006, (Davis v. Washington), all nine justices agreed that a victim’s 911 call describing a crime in progress and identify- ing the assailant can be entered as evidence in court pro- ceedings, without violating the defendant’s Sixth
Amendment right to confront his accuser, if the complainant can’t or chooses not to testify (Greenhouse, 2006).
People Concerned About Crime Have a Right to Keep Handguns in Their Homes In 2008 (District of Columbia et al. v. Heller), five justices interpreted the Second Amendment as granting individuals who fear that criminals might invade their residences the right to own loaded handguns to defend themselves, their families, and their property, even in large cities with very strict gun control laws. The dissenters cited the dangers of accidental domestic fatalities and the need to protect children from access to firearms (Greenhouse, 2008; Wasserman, 2008).
A Victim’s Dying Words Can Be Reported to a Jury In 2011 (Michigan v. Bryant), six of the eight justices inter- preted the Sixth Amendment’s confrontation clause as per- mitting a dying man’s identification of his assailant to police officers to be admissible as evidence against the defendant in a murder trial (Liptak, 2011).
Police Can Collect DNA from Arrestees to Use to Solve Crimes Like Rapes In 2013 (Maryland V. King), by a vote of 5–4, the Court granted the police authority to take DNA samples derived from cheek swabs from the persons they arrest to see if a match will reveal their participation in a crime, especially in cases of sexual assault where such forensic evidence plays a key role in identifying an assailant (RAINN, 2014).