Marsy’s Law for Maine is a game changer for people like me. As a victim of a violent crime, it is difficult to describe what it is like to deal with the sense of injustice in Maine’s criminal-justice system because of crime victims’ lack of constitutionally guaranteed rights. Innocent victims’ lives — like my own and my family’s — are forever changed by a criminal’s decision to harm us. Everything I thought I knew was redefined in one phone call in 1999, when I learned that my grandson and my daughter’s best friend were murdered. It shattered my sense of reality and changed my entire perspective on life. It affected me to my DNA.
The realization that those accused or convicted of crimes against us are afforded specific rights and protections that are constitutionally enshrined and that we — the innocent victims of those crimes — have zero rights in the Maine Constitution is cruel.
Marsy’s Law for Maine is a bipartisan effort to remedy this injustice by ensuring crime victims have equal rights and equal legal footing to the rights of those accused and convicted of the crimes against us. Crime victims should not have the added burden of feeling such injustice after the cruelest of acts are committed against us when the people who had no right to cause us such deep and lifelong pain in the first place are protected.
While Maine’s criminal code addresses the rights of crime victims in statute, and is well-meaning, it is not enough. The right to “request” restitution is not a “right to restitution,” and the “right” to be notified of an upcoming legal proceeding “whenever practicable,” as is currently the case, does not suffice because it is not a requirement. Victims of crime deserve these rights to be guaranteed in the Maine Constitution.
That is why the members of the Maine chapter of Parents of Murdered Children, a grass-roots victims’ advocacy organization that I lead, support Marsy’s Law for Maine, which will elevate our rights as victims of crime to be as strong and enforceable as the rights of the people accused or convicted of a crime. Marsy’s Law for Maine will ensure our rights are recognized at the highest levels of the criminal and juvenile justice systems, and it will finally guarantee us the voice and legal standing that true justice demands.
Marsy’s Law for Maine ensures that we have the constitutional rights to be treated with courtesy, fairness and respect for our dignity and privacy throughout criminal justice proceedings; receive information about our rights and the services available to us; receive timely notification of proceedings and other major developments in our case; receive timely notification of changes to the offender’s custodial status; and be present at court proceedings. We also will have the right to provide input to the prosecutor before a plea agreement is finalized, be heard at plea, sentencing proceedings, or any process that may result in the offender’s release, and we will have the right to restitution.
Marsy’s Law for Maine will mean a great deal to crime victims. We will no longer feel our rights, or our voices and participation in the cases that affect us, are afterthoughts. It won’t change the reality we now live with nor the never-ending grief we feel, but it will reassure us that we will not be forgotten, and that we will — at long last — have legal standing equal to that of the accused or convicted. Marsy’s Law for Maine also will help end the continual reminders that occur for crime victims year after year — with the appeals, post-conviction reviews and legal challenges we suffer through — that those who took so much from us have greater legal standing than we do.
I take this opportunity during National Crime Victims’ Rights Week to thank Senate President Mike Thibodeau, House Majority Leader Erin Herbig and the co-sponsors of Marsy’s Law for Maine for their efforts to bring long-awaited justice to crime victims in Maine. It is my sincere hope that our state’s lawmakers, and eventually Maine voters, will support this much-needed remedy for crime victims who find it patently unjust that accused and convicted criminals have guaranteed constitutional rights and protections that we — the innocent victims — do not.
Arthur Jette is the leader of the Maine chapter of Parents of Murdered Children.