This is National Crime Victims’ Rights Week, our government says.  I wasn’t aware of this until Doug Berman let the cat out of the bag.  The cat was likely a victim.  President Obama wants to raise awareness of victims’ rights.  I do too.

The victim of a wrong must have access to the courts, to be compensated and made whole for their suffering at the hands of another.  We must stand shoulder to shoulder with victims and support them, both in their time of need and in their quest for justice.  But there is something I don’t get about my fellow supporters of victims.

Over at Law.com is a National Law Journal article about the victims of environmental crimes, It discusses the alleged abuse of the Crime Victims Rights Act in cases where potentially huge numbers of people are affected and seek to insert themselves in the criminal process against alleged corporate polluters.  More about that later.

It occurs to me that there is a substantial overlap between the people deeply concerned for victims having rights in a criminal prosecution who strive to deny victims their right to compensation in a civil proceeding.  Curious, no?  Why is it that victims are good when going after the criminal, and bad when going after the negligent physician or corporation?  Why is it that they fully support a third table in the well of a criminal case, but want to slam the courthouse doors shut on victims when they seek damages for the pain and suffering?  Worse still, why is it that they applaud punitive punishment but despise punitive damages?

As for the claims that the CVRA has given an unintended advantage to the government in environmental crimes, consider this:

“The BP case and the W.R. Grace case are harbingers of things to come,” said Paul Cassell, who is representing the victims in the W.R. Grace case and represented victims in the BP case. “It’s one of the new areas where crime victims advocates are trying to make sure victims’ rights are protected,” Cassell said of environmental crimes.

But as for whether crime victims in general deserve a greater voice in environmental cases, he said the CVRA gives them that right. “It was designed to make victims participants in the criminal justice process,” Cassell said. “And it was designed to extend rights to all victims of crimes — across the board.”

Of course, Cassell’s vision is derived solely from the fact that the CVRA creates “rights” out of vapor.  Congress says victims have rights, and so they must.  The defense lawyers respond:

“You’re blurring the criminal process with the traditional civil process where people can go and get any harm remedied and get compensation. And by blurring the process, I think you’re potentially harming and prejudicing defendants’ rights,” said Jerry Block, a partner at Venable and a former chief of DOJ’s environmental crimes section.

Judson W. Starr, also a Venable partner and a former chief of that DOJ section, believes the CVRA is being misused. “I think the act was originally intended for fraud, murder and drug cases, not environmental crimes,” said Starr. “I’m feeling that the original intent of the act did not contemplate an array of witnesses as large as the potential is in environmental crimes cases. … Right now, it puts another party at the table in what is already a complicated environment.”

Notice anything curious about these views?  They jump at the chance to sell out the considerations that apply to cases that don’t directly affect their pocketbook, but whine that it’s unfair in their particular circumstances alone.  They do not challenge the concept that crime victims are entitled to be thrust into the adversarial mix of a criminal prosecution, but just that victims have no business being involved in their cases.  You can almost hear the disgust dripping from their lips as they utter the filthy words, “fraud, murder and drug cases,” those low-life crimes that the pristine hands of venerable Venable lawyers would never touch.

The doctrinal flaws, inherent contradictions, facial inconsistencies that fly around the crime victims rights issue, and are repeated by seemingly intelligent people, disappear in the face of our inherent sympathy toward victims.  Who doesn’t care about victims, as long as they keep their grubby little victim mitts off corporate cash.  Then victims become money grubbers hellbent on destroying capitalism and our economy, denying healthcare to the masses by forcing physicians to practice defensive medicine and the like.

So it’s National Crime Victims’ Week.  Hug a crime victim.  Help a crime victim to obtain compensation and care.  Support crime victims to recover the life stolen from them by the act of another.  And in the process, consider whether crime victims are better served by the CVRA, undermining the basic structure of criminal proceedings designed to provide just a hint of fairness to the accused, or by supporting the ability of victims to obtain civil relief, to compensate them for their suffering and to make them whole again.