Leighton Criminal Court Building (Michael Izquierdo / WTTW News)
As Illinois voters head to the polls, advocates for crime victims are celebrating the results of an election a decade ago.
In November 2014, more than 2.6 million Illinois residents overwhelmingly voted to add a “crime victims’ rights” amendment, known as Marsy’s Law, to the state constitution.
Its passage has been a “game changer,” said Jennifer Bishop Jenkins, the director of Marsy’s Law for Illinois.
It’s personal for her. Bishop Jenkins’ sister, her sister’s husband, and their unborn child were murdered in Winnetka in 1990. Their killer is serving a lifetime prison sentence, but she recalls what felt like a source of injustice during his sentencing.
Her family prepared victim impact statements, but the court was “too busy” and “swamped” to hear how the triple homicide had traumatized them.
It was then she learned that while Illinois had legal protections for crime victims, they weren’t “particularly strong or enforceable.”
That eventually led to the passage of the constitutional amendment, modeled after a similar movement in California, named Marsy’s Law in honor of murder victim Marsalee (Marsy) Ann Nicholas.
On Monday – the 10th anniversary of the vote—Bishop Jenkins thanked Illinois residents for its passage.
“Here I am, 34 years later, still going to court regularly on the offender’s attempts at resentencing. And so I’m still in the legal process, but now I have a victim advocate who gets notified. Everything is working really well,” Bishop Jenkins said. “It’s been like night and day, some very great night and day.”
Illinois now guarantees that crime victims “be treated with fairness and respect … free from harassment, intimidation and abuse throughout the criminal justice process.” They are required to receive notice of court proceedings, change in status of the accused, to be present at trial and to have victims’ safety considered when determining a defendant’s bail and conditions or release, among other rights.
Cindy Hora, who helped draft the amendment at the time given her then-role at former Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan’s office, said the protection of victims’ records is important.
Before, she said, “courts were just ordered those records to be turned over, and the victim might not know about it,” which was traumatizing, Hora said.
The potential fear is higher now, given the rise in social media.
She said most important is that victims have legal standing.
“It means that they can assert their rights in legal proceedings,” Hora said.
Lake County State’s Attorney Eric Rinehart said his office is working to make sure that all victims and communities are able to access those protections.
He said the office now has Spanish specialists and lawyers to work with Spanish-speaking victims, and that they use a texting system to send notifications on court dates, similar to how airlines text flight updates.
“Why’s that important? Because victims and survivors might not be in a physical or mental space to take a phone call,” Rinehart said. “It’s those types of trauma-informed practices that I think are really important to continue to make sure that we’re helping folks.”
Still, critics say Illinois needs to improve its practices and give victims more notice — issues brought to light after the Prisoner Review Board voted to release parolee Crosetti Brand despite him sending threatening texts to an ex-girlfriend.
The day after his release, Brand allegedly went to the woman’s home and fatally stabbed her 11-year-old son, Jaydone Perkins.
A measure sponsored by state Rep. Kelly Cassidy, D-Chicago, that passed the House but was never called in the Senate last spring, would require the Prisoner Review Board to live stream its hearings and to publish information so victims can submit impact statements.
Contact Amanda Vinicky: @AmandaVinicky | [email protected]
