Victims’ Advocates Chart New Course in Courtroom in Cases of Violent Crime

Opportunity came knocking for Judith Rowland on Jan. 27, when Craig Alan Peyer, accused of murder, stood before Municipal Court Judge Herbert Exharos and asked that his bail be reduced from $500,000 to $300,000.

Rowland, 43, a former prosecutor who co-founded the California Center on Victimology in 1984, made sure that she was there, too. After a private discussion with Exharos, Deputy Dist. Atty. Joseph Van Orshoven and defense attor ney Robert Grimes, Rowland was allowed the rare opportunity to speak in court on behalf of the family of strangling victim Cara Evelyn Knott. She requested that Peyer’s bail be denied.

The unusual inclusion of a third-party “victim’s advocate” at an early stage of a highly publicized murder trial has drawn the notice of two interest groups that watch judicial proceedings very carefully: the defense lawyers who make their living in the courtroom, and the increasingly powerful members of the victims’ rights movement, which is trying to change the rules of the criminal justice system.

It also has focused some of the attention received by Peyer--a 13-year veteran of the California Highway Patrol who is accused of killing Knott on Dec. 27--on Rowland, one of the cause’s most aggressive national leaders.

To her supporters, Rowland was simply doing what she does best: wading into uncharted legal waters in an attempt to expand the growing list of courtroom prerogatives open to victims of violent crimes.

“We are blessed by people like Judy . . . who are willing to push, who are willing to be there at critical moments and challenge the status quo,” said Gene Patterson, executive director of the Fort Worth-based Sunny Von Bulow National Victim Advocacy Center, one of about 4,200 organizations concerned with victims’ rights.

But, to her critics, especially defense lawyers, Rowland was hotdogging again, trying to fix a legal system that wasn’t broken and stack the deck against defendants. Those who privately question Rowland’s legal skills were buoyed when Superior Court Judge Richard Huffman later ruled that she should not have been allowed to speak at the bail hearing.

“The only function that someone like Judy Rowland (serves) is to inflame the passions of the judge and the public by the kind of press she gets,” said Elisabeth Semel, a defense attorney. “But she has absolutely no knowledge that is relevant to the issue.

“The questions that are properly before the court in evaluating the issue of bail do not concern the kinds of matters that Judy Rowland wishes to bring to the court. It’s not proper. It’s not lawful.”

Rowland said she was not hunting media attention in her unusual appearance at Peyer’s bail hearing, a claim some of her critics doubt in light of the fact that the victimology center suffered well-publicized money problems last year.

“It didn’t occur to me that it was going to get this much publicity because I had done it before” in a much less-publicized murder case last year, Rowland said. “It never hit me that it was going to generate this much attention.”

Whatever the truth, there is no denying that, in three short years, Rowland has helped to make victims’ rights and services a well-recognized concept here and has become an integral part of the growing nationwide movement.

After nine years in the San Diego County district attorney’s office, Rowland quit to write “The Ultimate Violation,” which detailed her pioneering emphasis on the effect of “rape trauma syndrome” on victims in successfully prosecuting rape cases.

Her interest in rape victims led her to co-found the San Diego-based California Center on Victimology, which provides counseling and free legal assistance to victims of violent crimes. Advocates also accompany victims to court and attempt to teach the media to show greater sensitivity to crime victims in times of trauma.

The center’s legal clinic is one of only three in the nation offering the services of lawyers who help victims track cases through the complex legal system and fill out compensation claims.

Last year, Rowland sponsored a bill in the Legislature seeking to have California fund similar legal clinics in other parts of the state. The bill was approved by the Assembly but failed in the Senate.

She has also written a friend-of-the-court brief in a Maryland case that will go before the U.S. Supreme Court. The case tests the right of victims to offer “impact statements” before defendants are sentenced, a right now available to victims in 43 states.

Rowland also lectures to victims’ groups about their legal rights and how to expand them.

“I became aware that there was a place for lawyers in the victim rights movement as I went along,” she said. “So it wasn’t something that I had planned, plotted, knew where I was going and set out to do it. I kind of stumbled into it.”

Rowland joined a movement that, in the 1980s, began to enjoy rapid growth and new-found power. As of 1975, when the National Organization for Victim Assistance, based in Washington, D.C., was founded, few states had services for victims of violent crimes or recognized them in the courtroom, said John Stein, its deputy director.

Today, 44 states offer victims compensation for physical and emotional injuries, 33 allow them to offer victim impact statements at sentencing, 28 allow them to offer testimony at parole hearings, and 12 give them the right to stay in the courtroom throughout trials. Alabama allows the victim to sit at the prosecutor’s table.

Groups such as Mothers Against Drunk Driving are demanding--and winning--the attention of legislators and the public. California victims also flexed their muscle in the voting booth, joining other groups last year to help oust Chief Justice Rose Elizabeth Bird and two other state Supreme Court justices who often voted to overturn death penalty sentences.

Leaders of the victims’ rights movement say it is an attempt on behalf of the 35 million Americans touched by violent crime to bring balance to judicial proceedings that have swung sharply in favor of defendants.

Victims of violent crime “came to court and discovered that, as victims, they didn’t have any rights. They were literally a piece of evidence and nothing more,” said Patterson of the Sunny Von Bulow National Victim Advocacy Center. “They understood, for the first time usually, that the rights of the defendant seemed to totally control the judicial process, to the extent that the victim’s rights were subjugated.”

Rowland added: “They are cogs in somebody else’s wheel. It might be as an element of the offense, or as a witness or as a patient. But they never in their own rights have any say over something that . . . may be the most life-altering experience they will ever have.”

Rowland’s gambit in the Peyer case was an attempt to expand victims’ rights still further. American jurisprudence calls for an adversary proceeding between two attorneys, one representing the defendant and another representing the state and victim. But California has no laws prohibiting the inclusion of a victim’s representative. In the early days of the British judicial system, victims were actually responsible for directing the prosecution of people who committed crimes against them.

By standing before Exharos on behalf of the Knotts, who had retained her after their daughter’s death, Rowland upset a traditional balance between defendant and prosecutor. Victims and their advocates applauded, but defense attorneys were shocked by the possibility of attorneys for victims joining forces with prosecutors against a defendant.

“How much weight do you want to place on the government’s side of the case?” asked Judy Clarke, president of the 400-member Criminal Defense Bar Assn. “It appears that the people’s lawyer should be able to make the case on the part of the people. And how often do you want to let extraneous lawyers into the process?

“It troubles me because I’m afraid that we’re going to get swept up and forget the accused,” Clarke said. “We’re going to forget that legally relevant evidence is what we should rely upon to sustain convictions, and not sympathy and not emotions.”

Even prosecutor Van Orshoven, who did not object at the time to Rowland’s role in the Peyer case, now says that he is not sure that appearances by a victim’s advocate in the early stages of a trial are “necessarily salutary.”

Grimes, Peyer’s attorney, protested what he considered “a tampering with the scales of justice.”

“Does the defense get to bring in the ACLU or the public defender’s association? It could really go on forever,” Grimes said.

But after a discussion in his chambers, Exharos let Rowland speak. Rowland argued that public safety considerations allowed the judge to deny Peyer bail.

While not unprecedented, Rowland’s maneuver was unusual enough to attract attention from victims’ groups around the country. Susan Hillenbrand, director of the American Bar Assn.’s victim-witness project, said she has never heard of such a tactic. Neither had Stein of the National Organization for Victim Assistance.

Increased victim involvement in courtrooms is happening “because victims want that, because they’ve been able to show that, in most instances, that does not in any way affect the defendant’s rights,” Hillenbrand said. “I just think there’s a much greater awareness that, even though technically speaking the crime was against the state, there is a victim there.”

But Grimes appealed the case to Superior Court, where Judge Richard Huffman--Rowland’s former supervisor in the district attorney’s office--put a stop to her efforts. Huffman ruled that Exharos should not have allowed Rowland to speak in court, although he found that the error did not influence the decision to double Peyer’s bail to $1 million.

The penal code includes “a statutory right of victims to appear and to address the Court at the time of sentencing, “ Huffman wrote in his Feb. 17 opinion. “There appears to be no other statutory or court-authorized right of victim representatives to appear and argue issues of law or fact before the California courts.”

Huffman also ruled that public safety cannot be considered a factor in non-capital crimes like Peyer’s.

Rowland’s critics claimed victory.

“There’s a lot of sizzle and no steak,” said one source in the district attorney’s office. “She’s attuned to cases with a high publicity value, and she’s interested in promoting the victimology center--and I’m not faulting her for that. But I don’t see a lot of substantive work there.”

Others noted that several years before, a state appellate court struck down Rowland’s use of rape trauma syndrome as evidence against a defendant. The syndrome can still be used to establish a victim’s credibility in court.

While Huffman’s opinion does not bind other judges, Rowland conceded that “every judge . . . in this district and every D.A. is going to be very reluctant to allow me to (speak in court in early stages of a case) or to allow another victim advocate to do it.”

But the maneuver did not backfire, Rowland believes. Voters who thought they were setting tough bail standards when they approved Propositions 4 and 8 in 1982 will be chagrined to learn that Peyer could not be denied bail, she said.

“The law says, apparently, in this state public safety cannot be considered in setting the bail. I think that’s going to be taken very, very badly by many, many people. I think if the right people hear it, that maybe something will be done,” Rowland said.

In the meantime, Rowland and her colleagues will continue to press for reform in U.S. courtrooms, confident that the victims’ rights movement is gaining momentum.

“I think we have reached the stage where the Establishment, where the system . . . (has) realized that this is something that is not going to go away,” Rowland said. “And I think it’s going to have a great impact on policy for the next generation, (on) what people think about victims and victims’ rights.”

Emphasizing that the movement must move slowly and within the judicial system to achieve parity with--not dominance over--defendants, Rowland sees increasing attention to details that will allow victims to feel like participants in criminal trials.

That means more consultation with prosecutors over plea bargain decisions, better procedures to inform victims of trial dates, and new laws allowing victims in the courtroom throughout trials, Rowland and others said.

“What (victims) want more than anything else, or at least as much as justice in the system, is to feel whole again,” Rowland said. “And to do that, they have to have some control back.

“The victimization in itself creates the feeling that they’ve lost all control of their lives. They lose everything, literally as well as figuratively. To not allow them to participate makes it worse,” she said.

Rowland said that the day will soon arrive when judges will demand to know why victims or their lawyers are not present at a sentencing hearing. Notification by prosecutors of key dates and decisions will become routine, “not a matter of catch as catch can, or of establishing a wonderful relationship with the prosecutor,” she said.

In the long run, Rowland said, attorneys will represent victims at all stages of a trial, though without the legal standing in the courtroom afforded lawyers for the defense and prosecution. Instead, they will monitor proceedings and participate outside the courtroom to ensure that the rights of victims are being recognized, she said. An expanded network for victims’ legal clinics will make this right available to the poor, Rowland added.

“As examples come along like the Peyer case, the need for the victim to have a voice will become evident,” Rowland said. “We can’t have everything at once. I’m willing to wait. I’m willing to be patient, but firm.”