Prosecutors Getting Tough With Batterers : When Victim Recants, a 911 Tape Helps Win Conviction

The United States surgeon general says that battering is the nation’s single largest cause of injury to women. That makes it a problem of immense proportions, and prosecutors here in California have finally begun to respond by seeking harsher penalties for domestic violence. They are also trying out several new approaches to obtain convictions. A local case points out the importance of this emphasis, especially when the victim does not appear to be a victim at all.

To the casual observer at the Van Nuys Municipal Court, for example, a particular couple might have appeared to be very much in love. In fact, the defendant, Koeppel Hall of North Hollywood, was so engrossed in hugging and kissing his girlfriend that Judge Gregg Marcus had to tell them both to cool off. It was an example of an aspect of domestic violence that is almost as chilling as the violence itself.

Four months earlier, the same 22-year-old girlfriend had dialed the emergency number of the Los Angeles Police Department. In a frightening, three-minute call, she cried, pleaded for paramedics, and described a violent attack. “My boyfriend of mine just jumped on me,” she told a 911 dispatcher. “My back is bruised bad. My face is bruised.”

Hall, an unemployed laborer and an ex-convict who had served a five-year prison stint for manslaughter, was arrested shortly afterward. Among other things, police also made note of long scratches on the girlfriend’s back and neck.

But as is too often the case in domestic violence situations, the girlfriend recanted and claimed that nothing had happened even though the physical evidence, and that 911 call, suggested otherwise. This kind of denial from an abused woman or man can come either from fear or misplaced optimism. In this case, the girlfriend claimed that she suffered from flashbacks, and that Hall had only been trying to calm her down.

But prosecutors tried the case anyway, with the 911 tape as their best evidence. The victim had become a reluctant--if not hostile--witness, but justice prevailed.

A jury deliberated two days before finding Hall guilty of battery. Judge Marcus recently showed his sympathy with the jury’s verdict by leveling the maximum sentence allowed under the law: one year of incarceration. “If it warrants it (the maximum), I give it,” Judge Marcus said later in chambers.

It is an example of the kind of case that can--and should--be brought against the perpetrators of domestic violence, even if the victim has decided not to press charges or to deny that the incident ever occurred. The city attorney’s office, which prosecuted the case, did the right thing here. In one very sad respect, however, this case is not yet finished, nor should it be.

More people are now willing to report domestic violence. More victimized women are seeking help by calling hot lines in record numbers, and the San Fernando Valley’s only shelter for battered women, Haven Hills, is making progress in trying to open the county’s first long-term housing complex for battered women. But the girlfriend in that Van Nuys courtroom case is an example of a frightening need that must be addressed. It’s the need for some victims to realize that they are victims.