Victims and the Criminal Trial Process

Abstract

The twenty-first century criminal trial is increasingly modified to benefit the needs of crime victims. Victims are increasingly participating in all phases of the criminal trial, with new substantive and procedural rights, many of which may be enforced against the state or defendant. This movement to enforceable rights has been controversial, and evidences a contested terrain between lawyers, defendants, policy-makers, and even victims themselves. By elaborating upon the various ways in which victims are appropriately placed in the modern criminal trial process, this book demonstrates how victims are significantly connected to and even constitutive of the modern adversarial criminal trial. In order to demonstrate the connectedness of the victim to the modern trial, all processes that seek to place the victim as a significantly determinative and even constitutive agent of justice will be considered. The role of the victim, and the rights and powers afforded to them, will therefore be considered in the context of pre-trial processes through to trial, sentencing, and corrections, within the primary context of the Western adversarial trial. Alternative pathways will also be considered, as will international law and procedure, in addition to extra-curial or adjunctive rights provided by international instruments, ratified declarations of rights, or executive order. The twenty-first century criminal trial is increasingly reconceived in form and substance, yet victims remain controversial and contested participants of justice, despite being increasingly connected to the criminal trial.