Last week, capping a five-year effort by Arizona crime victims' rights advocates, the Arizona Supreme Court amended its rules of criminal procedure to provide crime victims' rights throughout the criminal justice process. Because Arizona's decision is the first thorough integration of victims' rights in a state's rules of criminal procedure, it is worth attention. I hope that Arizona's approach will be followed by other states and, ultimately, by the drafters of the federal rules of criminal procedure.
Some background: Over the last several decades, many state legislatures and Congress have adopted constitutional and statutory reforms protecting crime victims' rights in the criminal justice process. Victims now commonly have the rights, for example, to notice of court hearings and be heard at hearings involving bail, plea, and sentencing (as I discuss here, here, and here).
But a challenge with enforcing these rights is making them part of day-to-day criminal justice processes. Often procedural steps are set out in the court rules–rules that were written at a time when crime victims were not part of the process. As a result, in too many cases, crime victims' rights are ignored because criminal practitioners do not see any reference to victims' rights in the criminal rules.
