The State - News from April 27, 1988

Lacking adequate funds, a coalition of victims’ rights groups, whose leadership is primarily in Orange County, has quietly disbanded its efforts to put a victims’ rights initiative on the November ballot. The group, called Crime Victims’ California Justice Committee, hopes to try for a 1989 ballot initiative. The group already had come up with more than 100,000 signatures from a statewide test mailer, but needed 600,000 signatures by mid-May to qualify the measure. The proposed initiative would force numerous changes in the court system, which prosecutors believe would result in speedier trials. Defense lawyers and the American Civil Liberties Union were generally opposed, claiming the measure would interfere with defendants’ civil rights. “We simply did not come up with enough money to put on an effective campaign,” said Orange County Deputy Dist. Atty. Anthony J. Rackauckas Jr.