The proposed amendment we are considering today does just that. Although I am generally supportive of protecting victims rights, I have two concerns about this proposed amendment that I would like to explore at today s hearing. First, I am concerned that the proposed amendment does not expressly provide any rights to the victim when a state official commutes or pardons the sentence of a convicted criminal. The amendment provides victims with the right to notice and, where appropriate, an opportunity to be heard at every other critical stage in the process from trial to incarceration to release. It provides rights to victims when the court imposes a sentence and the parole board reviews a sentence, but it denies victims any rights when an executive considers overturning a sentence with a stroke of his pen.
Victims of crime deserve more compassion from our system of justice.
The emotional impact on a victim's family of the commutation or the pardon of a cold-blooded killer is at least as distressing as an early release by a parole board. A recent commutation in Missouri should make all Senators sensitive to the suffering a commutation can cause to a family already scarred by violent crime. In this case, the family experienced the horror of having three family members, one a handicapped teenager, brutally murdered. The killer lay in wait for his victims and ambushed them as they rode by. After shooting all three, the killer shot each of them once more in the head at point-blank range.