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64 CASSELL ET AL. [Vol. 104]

court proceedings, and ultimately to any parole or other release of the
criminal. The Task Force then made a series of recommendations for all
criminal justice agencies, including the police, prosecutors, and the courts.11
The recommendations were designed to allow crime victims to receive
information about, and to participate in, criminal cases.

In its most far-reaching recommendation, the Task Force proposed
amending the U.S. Constitution to protect victims’ rights.12 The proposed
amendment would have built on existing constitutional rights for criminal
defendants by extending similar rights to crime victims.13

After the publication of the report, crime victims’ advocates secured
the passage of a series of state constitutional and legislative reforms. These
measures guaranteed victims’ rights in the criminal process, such as the
right to be notified of court proceedings, to attend those proceedings, and to
speak at appropriate points in the process, such as plea bargaining and
sentencing. The measures were embodied in state statutes and, in more
than thirty states, state constitutional “bills of rights” for crime victims.14
While many of the measures had narrow participatory rights,15 some of the
amendments also contained more open-ended language, promising victims
a right to fair treatment “throughout the criminal justice process.”16

After successfully passing many state constitutional amendments,
crime victims’ rights advocates sought to achieve the Task Force’s broadest
recommendation: to secure protection for victims’ rights in the U.S.
Constitution. In 1996, victims’ advocates proposed a Victims’ Rights
Amendment in a Rose Garden ceremony attended by President Bill
Clinton.17 The proposed amendment contained a list of rights for crime
victims, largely paralleling the rights contained in state victims’ rights

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11 See id. at 56–82.
12 Id. at 114.
13 Id. at 114–15.
14 For a map depicting the states with (and without) such amendments, see State Victim
Rights Amendments, NAT’L VICTIMS’ CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT PASSAGE,
http://goo.gl/znI4YW (last visited Nov. 26, 2013); for discussion, see infra Part IV.D
(discussing legislative reforms in a number of states).
15 See, e.g., CAL. CONST. art. I, § 28; MICH. CONST. art. I, § 24; N.C. CONST. art. I, § 37.
For a detailed discussion of how one state constitutional amendment is intended to operate,
see generally Paul G. Cassell, Balancing the Scales of Justice: The Case for and the Effects
of Utah’s Victims’ Rights Amendment, 1994 UTAH L. REV. 1373.
16 E.g., ARIZ. CONST. art. II, § 2.1(A)(1); MICH. CONST. art. I, § 24(1); TEX. CONST. art. I,
§ 30(a)(1); see CAL. CONST. art. I, § 28(b)(1) (“throughout the criminal or juvenile justice process”).
17 John M. Broder, Clinton Calls for Victims’ Rights in Constitution, L.A. TIMES, June
26, 1996, at A1. For detailed discussions of the legislative efforts, see Paul G. Cassell,
Recognizing Victims in the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure: Proposed Amendments in
Light of the Crime Victims’ Rights Act, 2005 BYU L. REV. 835, 847–50.

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