Opinion ID: 2630608
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Victims' Rights Amendment

Text: ¶ 16 We discuss the victims' rights amendment to Utah's Constitution (the amendment) to provide useful context for our review of past and current treatment of rape and sexual assault victims. However, because [r]ules, like statutes, are to be construed to avoid constitutional interpretation where possible, we do not decide this case by resorting to Utah's victims' rights amendment. Preuss v. Wilkerson, 858 P.2d 1362, 1362-63 (Utah 1993). The amendment recognizes specific rights of crime victims. Among those rights is the right [t]o be treated with fairness, respect, and dignity, and to be free from harassment and abuse throughout the criminal justice process. Utah Const. art. I, § 28(1)(a). This provision was enacted in response to an increasing recognition that: Victims who do survive their attack, and are brave enough to come forward, turn to their government expecting it to ... protect the innocent.... Without the cooperation of victims and witnesses in reporting and testifying about crime, it is impossible in a free society to hold criminals accountable. When victims come forward to perform this vital service, however, they find little protection. They discover instead that they will be treated as appendages of a system appallingly out of balance. They learn that somewhere along the way the system has lost track of the simple truth that it is supposed to be fair and to protect those who obey the law while punishing those who break it. Somewhere along the way, the system began to serve lawyers and defendants, treating victims with institutionalized disinterest. President's Task Force on Victims of Crime, Final Report, iv (1982) (quoted in Paul Cassell, Balancing the Scales of Justice: The Case for and the Effects of Utah's Victims' Rights Amendment, 1994 Utah L.Rev. 1373, 1379). Utah law now recognizes that victims have fared poorly in the criminal justice system and that they are to be more involved in the process of punishing the acts of which they became unwilling participants.