Why would anyone even con- sider striving for objectivity to be an indispensable prerequisite of each and every scientific analysis?
WHY OBJECTIVITY IS DESIRABLE
At first glance, the importance of reserving judg- ments, refraining from jumping to conclusions, and resisting the urge to side with those who are in pain might not be self-evident. An angry, gut reaction might be to ask, “What kind of person would try to remain detached and dispassionate in the midst of such intense suffering? What is wrong with championing the interests of people whose
lives have been upended by unjust and illegal actions? Why is neutrality a worthwhile starting point in any analysis?”
The simple and direct answer to the question “Why shouldn’t victimologists be openly, unabash- edly, and consistently pro-victim?” is that, unlike the situations described in the examples above, on many occasions this formula offers no real guidance. So when is a person worthy of sympathy and support? Most people would consider an individual to be an innocent victim only when the following conditions apply (what sociologists would call the ideal type or positive stereotype): The person who suffered harm was weaker in comparison to the apparent aggressor and was acting virtuously (or at least was engaged in conventional activities and was not looking for trou- ble or breaking any laws), the wrongdoer was a com- plete stranger whose predatory behavior obviously was illegal and unprovoked, and the one who resorted to force was not a member of a governmen- tal agency authorized to use coercion (such as police officers or prison guards). Using the language of soci- ology, the status of being a legitimate or bona fide victim worthy of support is socially constructed and conferred (see Christie, 1986; and Dignan, 2005).
Sometimes It Is Difficult to Distinguish Victims from Villains
But real-life confrontations do not consistently gen- erate simple clear-cut cases that neatly fall into the dichotomies of good and evil, innocence and guilt. Not all victims were weak, defenseless, unsuspect- ing “lambs” who, through tragic or ironic circum- stances or just plain bad luck, were pounced upon by cunning, vicious “wolves.” In some instances, observers may have reasonable doubts and honest disagreements over which party in a conflict should be labeled the victim and which should be stigma- tized as the villain. These complicated situations dramatize the need for impartiality when untan- gling convoluted relationships in order to make a rational argument and a sound legal determination that one person should be arrested, prosecuted, and punished, and the other defended, supported, and assisted. Unlike the black-and-white examples
WH AT I S V I C T IMO LO G Y ? 5
Copyright 2016 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. WCN 02-200-203
presented above, many messy incidents reported in the news and processed by the courts embody shades of gray. Clashes frequently take place between two people who, to varying degrees, are simultaneously both victims, or both wrongdoers. Consider the following two accounts of iconic, highly publicized incidents from past decades that illustrate just how difficult it can be to try to estab- lish exactly who seriously misbehaved and who acted appropriately:
A wealthy couple are at home in their mansion watch- ing television and eating ice cream when someone shoots the man point-blank in the back of the head and then blasts his wife with a shotgun a number of times in the face. The police search for the killers for six months before the couple’s two sons, 21 and 18, concede that they did it. In a nationally televised trial for first-degree murder and facing possible execution, the sons give emotionally compelling (but uncorroborated) testimony describing how their father sexually molested and mentally abused them when they were little boys. The brothers contend they acted in self-defense, believing that their parents were about to murder them to keep the alleged incestuous acts a family secret. The prosecution argues that these boys killed their parents in order to get their hands on their $14 million inheritance (they had quickly spent $700,000 on luxury cars, condos, and fashionable clothing before they were arrested). The jurors become deadlocked over whether to find them guilty of murder or only of the lesser charge of voluntary manslaughter, and the judge declares a mistrial. In the second trial, the prosecution ridicules their “abuse excuse” defense. The jury convicts them of premedi- tated murder and sentences them to life in prison without parole. Soon afterwards, each brother gets married (the older one divorces and has a second wed- ding behind bars) even though the prison system does not permit conjugal visits for lifers. (Berns, 1994; Mydans, 1994; Associated Press, 1996a; and Hubbard, 2012)
An ex-Marine who works as a bouncer in a bar wakes up in his bed and discovers to his horror that his wife has sliced off his penis with a kitchen knife.
Arrested for “malicious wounding,” she tells the police that she mutilated him because earlier that evening in a drunken stupor he forced himself upon her. He is put on trial for marital sexual abuse but is acquitted by a jury that does not believe her testimony about a history of beatings, involuntary rough sex, and other humiliations. When she is indicted on felony charges (ironically, by the same prosecutor) for the bloody bedroom assault, many people rally to her side. To her supporters, she has undercut the debili- tating stereotype of female passivity; she literally disarmed him with a single stroke and threw the symbol of male sexual dominance out the window. To her detractors, she is a master of manipulation, publicly playing the role of a sobbing battered wife deserving of sympathy to divert attention from her act of rage against a sleeping husband who had lost his sexual interest in her. Facing up to 20 years in prison, she declines to plead guilty to a lesser charge and demands her day in court. The jury accepts her defense—that she was traumatized, deeply depressed, beset by flashbacks, and susceptible to “irresistible impulses” because of years of cruelty and abuse—and finds her not guilty by reason of tem- porary insanity. After 45 days under observation in a mental hospital, she is released. Soon afterwards, the couple divorces, and then they each take financial advantage of all the international media coverage, sensationalism, titillation, voyeurism, and sexual politics surrounding their deeply troubled relationship. Over the years, he is arrested seven times, gets mar- ried three more times, stars in porn movies, and brags that about 70 women have been sexually attracted to him because of his ordeal and re-attachment surgery. She is arrested for punching her mother but then sets up a charitable organization that attempts to prevent domestic violence. (Margolick, 1994; Sachs, 1994; and Moye, 2013)
In both of the classic cases that were resolved by the criminal justice system years ago in ways that caused quite an uproar and still provoke many heated discussions, the persons officially designated as the victims by the police and prosecutors—the dead parents, the slashed husband—arguably could be considered by certain standards as wrongdoers
6 CH APT ER 1
Copyright 2016 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. WCN 02-200-203
who “got what was coming to them.” Indeed, they were viewed just that way by substantial segments of the public and by some jurors. The defendants who got in trouble with the law—the shotgun- toting brothers, the knife-wielding wife—insisted that they should not be portrayed as criminals. On the contrary, they contended that they actually were the genuine victims who should not be pun- ished: sons sexually molested by their father, a bat- tered woman who was subjected to marital rape.
Now consider three confusing and controver- sial cases that made headlines and provoked heated public debates in recent years:
A 17-year-old boy wearing a hooded sweatshirt on a rainy night is on the phone with his girlfriend as he walks home from a store after buying a can of soda and some candy. A member of a neighborhood watch group on patrol in a gated community of townhouses that has recently suffered a rash of break-ins drives by, spots him, and calls the police, voicing his suspicions that, “He is up to no good…”. The 911dispatcher tells the 28-year-old man, who had taken some criminal justice courses at a community college, not to follow and confront the youth. But he does, and after he gets out of his SUV, they exchange words and become embroiled in a fistfight. Neighbors hear someone screaming and pleading for help, and call 911. When officers arrive, they find the man bloodied and the teenager dead from a bullet to his heart. The man claims that he was the actual victim and that he had a right to fire his licensed handgun in self- defense. When the news spreads that the local police department has decided not to arrest the armed crime watch volunteer, demonstrations erupt across the coun- try, demanding his arrest as an overzealous police wan- nabe who acted as a vigilante. Protesters also condemn provisions of the state’s “stand your ground” law for causing needless bloodshed and denounce the shooter for engaging in racial profiling because he trailed after what he deemed to be a “suspicious outsider.” The local police chief steps down, the county prosecutor and the Justice Department re-open the investigation, and President Obama identifies with the unarmed youth who was tragically and needlessly killed, telling journalists that, “If I had a son, he’d look like {the victim}.” A jury of six women acquits the defendant of charges of second
degree murder, and even of the lesser charge of man- slaughter. The jurors reject the prosecution’s version of the events: that the man had deliberately pursued the hoodie-clad black teenager and instigated the fight that led to the fatal shooting. The jury accepts the injured man’s contention that the teenager knocked him to the ground, punched him and repeatedly slammed his head against the sidewalk; and that he was justified in firing to protect himself because he feared grave bodily harm or death. The testimony and evidence at the trial does not clearly resolve key questions about what really happened that rainy night: who initiated the confrontation and started the fight by throwing the first punch, who screamed for help, and at what point was the handgun drawn? Angry protesters insisting that the dead teen was the genuine victim chant, “No justice, no peace.” After the controversial “not guilty” verdict, the man is featured in the news several times for brushes with the law involving violent outbursts. (Alvarez and Buckley, 2013; and Jauregui, 2014)
At around 4:30 am, a 55-year-old white man hears loud pounding and shouting at his front door and then at his side door. He grabs a shotgun and fires a blast through his locked screen door into the face of a teenage black girl standing on his front porch, killing her instantly. He is arrested and put on trial. Although he initially told the police that his weapon discharged accidentally, he tells the jury that he thought his home was about to be invaded by several intruders and, fearing for his life, vowed that “I wasn’t going to cower in my house, I didn’t want to be a victim.” The pros- ecution contends that he went to the door armed because he wanted to confront and frighten vandals who had defaced his vehicle with paintballs a few weeks earlier. The jury rejects his claim of firing in self-defense, and finds the man guilty of second degree murder and manslaughter. The young woman he killed turned out to be 19, unarmed, and intoxicated. Apparently she was making a commotion because she was seeking help after being involved in a car crash nearby several hours earlier. (Anderson, 2014; and Abby-Lambertz, 2014)
WH AT I S V I C T IMO LO G Y ? 7
Copyright 2016 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. WCN 02-200-203
A 29-year-old mother of 3 enters her home to gather her belongings so she can escape from her abusive estranged husband, whose periodic beatings have inflicted injuries that have sent her to a hospital. But he returns home unexpectedly, accompanied by two of her stepsons. The 10-year-old and 13-year-old watch in horror as he beats and strangles her. She runs into the garage to get into her car but finds herself trapped, so she grabs her licensed handgun and returns to their house. When he curses and charges towards her, she fires what she contends are three warning shots into the kitchen ceiling to ward him off. But he calls the police, and her shots are viewed as angry attempts to hurt or kill him and his sons. She rejects a plea offer and is put on trial, and after the jury deliberates for a mere 12 minutes, she is convicted of three counts of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, which could keep her in prison for 20 years. A grassroots move- ment of supporters fights for her release and for the charges to be dropped, viewing her as a battered woman who used a weapon to defend herself from imminent bodily injury. When her conviction is overturned because of faulty jury instructions, the prosecution vows to retry her and to seek consecutive sentences that would keep her behind bars for 60 years. (Shepeard, 2014)
In all three of these recent high-profile cases presented above, one other question arose: whether the race of the participants, and especially whether negative racial stereotypes, colors the thinking of various groups about which person should be des- ignated as the genuine victim (see Ghandnoosh, 2014). Also, in all three of these cases, individuals perceiving themselves to be facing a threat of immi- nent bodily harm reached for their gun, triggering a debate between advocates of armed self-defense and supporters of gun control legislation (the arguments of both sides of this controversy appear in Chapter 13). Sharply different points of view were aired in dinner table discussions, news media columnists’ interpretations, courtroom proceedings, and even political rallies about the role of race in decision making and about the use of deadly weapons for self-protection These are the kind of issues that vic- timologists need to study scientifically.
Whenever different interpretations of the facts lead to sharply divergent conclusions about who is actually the guilty party and who really is the injured party, knee-jerk pro-victim impulses provide no use- ful guidance for action. The confusion inherent in the unrealistically simplistic labels of 100 percent cul- pable criminal and 100 percent innocent victim underscores the need for objectivity when trying to figure out who is primarily responsible for whatever lawbreaking took place. Clearly, the dynamics between victims and victimizers need to be sorted out in an evenhanded and open-minded manner, not only by victimologists but also by journalists, police officers, prosecutors, judges, and juries.
In rare instances, even the authorities can’t make up their minds, as this unresolved incident demonstrates:
A pizza parlor chef and a mob henchman become embroiled in a knife fight that spills out on to a city street. They stab and slash each other and wind up in different hospitals. The police arrest both of the injured parties on charges of attempted murder as well as other offenses. However, each of the combatants refuses to testify in front of a grand jury against his adversary, fearing self-incrimination if he has to explain his motives and actions. The district attor- ney’s office declines to grant immunity from prose- cution to either of the two parties because detectives cannot figure out who was the attacker and who fought back in self-defense. As a result, neither is indicted, and a judge dismisses all the charges pend- ing from the melee. Both wounded men, and the lawyers representing them, walk out of court pleased with the outcome—that no one will get in trouble for an assault with a deadly weapon. (Robbins, 2011)