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82
CASSELL ET AL.
[Vol. 104]

Manson case>.'”127 Thus, Black’s Law Dictionary does not help resolve the
dispute as to which of the two meanings should be used, as there are clearly
differing meanings. While OLC’s reading may be a permissible one, so is a
pro-victim reading.
OLC also turns to the CVRA’s legislative history to bolster its
conclusion. But, here again, its analysis is misleading. OLC relies on a
passage from Senate floor colloquy between Senators Jon Kyl and Dianne
Feinstein regarding the CVRA’s scope. In OLC’s recounting of the
legislative history, the floor statements “emphasize that the right to confer
relates to the conduct of criminal proceedings after the filing of charges.”128
For instance, OLC quotes Senator Kyl stating that “[u]nder this provision,
victims are able to confer with the Government’s attorney about
proceedings after charging.”129
This is a truncated and deceptive description of the legislative history,
so much so that Senator Kyl sent an angry letter to Attorney General Eric
Holder complaining about the distortion. On June 6, 2011, the Senator
wrote to “express [his] surprise that [OLC is] so clearly quoting [his]
remarks out of context.”130 Senator Kyl then went on to observe that the
colloquy began by noting that the right to confer “is intended to be
expansive.”131 The Senator further discussed various “examples” of when
the right to confer applied, including “any critical stage or disposition of the
case. The right, however, is not limited to these examples.”132 It was
against that backdrop that Senator Kyl gave the example of conferring
about proceedings “after charging.”
In his letter to Attorney General Holder, Senator Kyl also noted that he
had:
made clear that crime victims had rights under the CVRA even before an indictment is
filed. For example, . . . I made clear that crime victims had a right to consult about
both ‘the case’ and ‘case proceedings’—i.e., about how the case was being
handled before being filed in court and then later how the case was being handled in
court ‘proceedings.’133
Senator Kyl further commented that he had discussed the CVRA’s potential
application in grand jury proceedings, an application that required the Act

127 BLACK’S LAW DICTIONARY, supra note 59, at 244.
128 OLC CVRA Rights Memo, supra note 2, at 9.
129 Id. (emphasis added) (quoting 150 CONG. REC. 7302 (2004) (statement of Sen. Jon
Kyl) (internal quotation marks and citation omitted).
130 Letter from Jon Kyl, supra note 3.
131 Id. (quoting 150 CONG. REC. S4260, S4268 (daily ed. Apr. 22, 2004) (statement of
Sen. Dianne Feinstein)).
132 Id.
133 Id.

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