[Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1996, Book I)]
[June 25, 1996]
[Pages 976-978]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]



Remarks Announcing Support for a Constitutional Amendment on
Victims' Rights
June 25, 1996

    Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and let me thank you all for 
being here. Thank you, Senator Kyl and Senator Feinstein, for your 
ground-breaking work here. Thank you, Senator Exon; my longtime friend 
Senator Heflin. Thank you, Congressman Frost, Congressman Stupak, 
Congressman Orton.
    I thank all the representatives here of the victims community, the 
law enforcement community. I thank the Attorney General and John Schmidt 
and Aileen Adams and Bonnie Campbell for doing such a fine job at the 
Justice Department on all criminal justice issues. I thank the Vice 
President and, especially, I want to thank Roberta Roper and the other 
members of the National Movement for Victims' Advocacy. Mr. Roper, thank 
you for coming. Thank you, John and Pat Byron; thank you, Marc Klaas; 
and thank you, Pam McClain. And especially, John Walsh, thank you for 
spending all of these years to bring these issues to America's 
attention. Thank you, sir.
    I'd also like to say a special word of thanks to the person who did 
more than any other person in the United States to talk me through all 
the legal and practical matters that have to be resolved in order for 
the President to advocate amending our Constitution: former prosecutor 
and a former colleague of mine, Governor Bob Miller of Nevada. Thank 
you, sir, for your work here.
    For years, we have worked to make our criminal justice system more 
effective, more fair, more even-handed, more vigilant in the protection 
of the innocent. Today, the system bends over backwards to protect those 
who may be innocent, and that is as it should be. But it too often 
ignores the millions and millions of people who are completely innocent 
because they're victims, and that is wrong. That is what we are trying 
to correct today.
    When someone is a victim, he or she should be at the center of the 
criminal justice process, not on the outside looking in. Participation 
in all forms of government is the essence of democracy. Victims should 
be guaranteed the right to participate in proceedings related to crimes 
committed against them. People accused of crimes have explicit 
constitutional rights. Ordinary citizens have a constitutional right to 
participate in criminal trials by serving on a jury. The press has a 
constitutional right to attend trials. All of this is as it should be. 
It is only the victims of crime who have no constitutional

[[Page 977]]

right to participate, and that is not the way it should be.
    Having carefully studied all the alternatives, I am now convinced 
that the only way to fully safeguard the rights of victims in America is 
to amend our Constitution and guarantee these basic rights: to be told 
about public court proceedings and to attend them; to make a statement 
to the court about bail, about sentencing, about accepting a plea if the 
victim is present; to be told about parole hearings to attend and to 
speak; notice when the defendant or convict escapes or is released; 
restitution from the defendant; reasonable protection from the 
defendant; and notice of these rights.
    If you have ever been a victim of a violent crime--it probably 
wouldn't even occur to you that these rights could be denied if you've 
never been a victim. But actually, it happens time and time again. It 
happens in spite of the fact that the victims' rights movement in 
America has been an active force for about 20 years now.
    The wife of a murdered State trooper in Maryland is left crying 
outside the courtroom for the entire trial of her husband's killers, 
because the defense subpoenaed her as a witness just to keep her out and 
never even called her. A rape victim in Florida isn't notified when her 
rapist is released on parole. He finds her and kills her.
    Last year in New Jersey, 8-year-old Jakiyah McClain was sexually 
assaulted and brutally murdered. She had gone to visit a friend and 
never came home. Police found her in the closet of an abandoned 
apartment; now, her mother wants to use a New Jersey law that gives the 
murder victims' survivors the right to address a jury deciding on the 
death penalty. She wants the jury to know more about this fine young 
girl than the crime scene reports. She wants them to know that Jakiyah 
was accepted into a school for gifted children the day before she died. 
But a New Jersey judge decided she can't testify even though the State 
law gave her the right to do so. He ruled that the defendant's 
constitutional right to a fair trial required him to strike the law 
down.
    Well, Jakiyah's mother had the courage to overcome her pain to be 
with us today. We have to change this for her and for other victims in 
America. Thank you, and God bless you.
    The only way to give victims equal and due consideration is to amend 
the Constitution. For nearly 20 years I have been involved in the fight 
for victims' rights, since I was attorney general in my home State. We 
passed laws then to guarantee victims' rights to attend trials and to 
get restitutions and later to get notice and to participate in parole 
hearings. Over all those years, I learned what every victim of crime 
knows too well: As long as the rights of the accused are protected but 
the rights of victims are not, time and again, the victims will lose.
    When a judge balances defendants' rights in the Federal Constitution 
against victims' rights in a statute or a State constitution, the 
defendants' rights almost always prevail. That's just how the law works 
today. We want to level the playing field. This is not about depriving 
people accused of crimes of their legitimate rights, including the 
presumption of innocence; this is about simple fairness. When a judge 
balances the rights of the accused and the rights of the victim, we want 
the rights of the victim to get equal weight. When a plea bargain is 
entered in public, a criminal is sentenced, a defendant is let out on 
bail, the victim ought to know about it and ought to have a say.
    I want to work with the congressional leadership, the House and 
Senate Judiciary Committees, including Senators Kyl and Feinstein and 
Chairman Hyde and law enforcement officials, to craft the best possible 
amendment. It should guarantee victims' rights in every court in the 
land, Federal, State, juvenile, and military. It should be self-
executing so that it takes effect as soon as it's ratified without 
additional legislation. Congress will take responsibility to enforce 
victims' rights in Federal courts, and the States will keep 
responsibility to enforce them in State courts, but we need the 
amendment.
    I also want to say, just before I go forward, again I want to thank 
Senators Kyl and Feinstein and the others who have approached this in a 
totally bipartisan manner. This is a cause for all Americans. When 
people are victimized, the criminal almost never asks before you're 
robbed or beaten or raped or murdered: Are you a Republican or a 
Democrat? This is a matter of national security just as much as the 
national security issues beyond our borders on which we try to achieve a 
bipartisan consensus. And I applaud the nonpolitical and patriotic way 
in which this matter has been approached in the Congress, just like it's 
approached every day in the country, and we ought to do our best to keep 
it that way.

[[Page 978]]

    We know that there can be, with any good effort, unforeseen 
consequences. We think we know what they would likely be, and we believe 
we know how to guard against them. We certainly don't want to make it 
harder for prosecutors to convict violent criminals. We sure don't want 
to give criminals like gang members, who may be victims of their 
associates, any way to take advantage of these rights just to slow the 
criminal justice process down.
    We want to protect victims, not accidentally help criminals. But we 
can solve these problems. The problems are not an excuse for inaction. 
We still have to go forward.
    Of course, amending the Constitution can take a long time. It may 
take years. And while we work to amend it, we must do everything in our 
power to enhance the protection of victims' rights now. Today I'm 
directing the Attorney General to hold the Federal system to a higher 
standard than ever before, to guarantee maximum participation by victims 
under existing law and to review existing legislation to see what 
further changes we ought to make.
    I'll give you an example. There ought to be, I believe, in every 
law, Federal and State, a protection for victims who participate in the 
criminal justice process not to be discriminated against on the job 
because they have to take time off. That protection today is accorded to 
jury members; it certainly ought to extend to people who are victims who 
need to be in the criminal justice process. And we shouldn't wait for 
that kind of thing to be done.
    I want investigators and prosecutors to take the strongest steps to 
include victims. I want work to begin immediately to launch a 
computerized system so victims get information about new developments in 
a case, in changes in the status or the location of a defendant or a 
convict.
    I do not support amending the Constitution lightly. It is sacred. It 
should be changed only with great caution and after much consideration. 
But I reject the idea that it should never be changed. Change it 
lightly, and you risk its distinction. But never change it, and you risk 
its vitality.
    I have supported the goals of many constitutional amendments since I 
took office, but in each amendment that has been proposed during my 
tenure as President, I have opposed the amendment either because it was 
not appropriate or not necessary. But this is different. I want to 
balance the budget, for example, but the Constitution already gives us 
the power to do that. What we need is the will and to work together to 
do that. I want young people to be able to express their religious 
convictions in an appropriate manner wherever they are, even in a 
school, but the Constitution protects people's rights to express their 
faith.
    But this is different. This is not an attempt to put legislative 
responsibilities in the Constitution or to guarantee a right that is 
already guaranteed. Amending the Constitution here is simply the only 
way to guarantee that victims' rights are weighted equally with 
defendants' rights in every courtroom in America.
    Two hundred twenty years ago, our Founding Fathers were concerned, 
justifiably, that Government never, never trample on the rights of 
people just because they are accused of a crime. Today, it's time for us 
to make sure that while we continue to protect the rights of the 
accused, Government does not trample on the rights of the victims.
    Until these rights are also enshrined in our Constitution, the 
people who have been hurt most by crime will continue to be denied equal 
justice under law. That's what this country is really all about, equal 
justice under law. And crime victims deserve that as much as any group 
of citizens in the United States ever will.
    Thank you, God bless you, and God bless America.

Note: The President spoke at 12:11 p.m. in the Rose Garden at the White 
House. In his remarks, he referred to the following parents who lost 
children in violent attacks: Roberta and Vincent Roper; John and Pat 
Byron; Marc Klaas; Pam McClain; and John Walsh. The President signed a 
related memorandum on crime victims' rights on June 27.