Two couples in Houston Texas endured weeks of testimony about how their teen-age daughters Jennifer Ertman and Elizabeth Pena were first raped, beaten, and then tortured to death by six teen-age attackers.
In the two and a half years since the murders, Adoph and Melissa Pena and Sandra and Randy Ertman have become leader's in a fledgling national victim's rights movement. Their hope is to reform the criminal justice system by making it a victim's justice system.
Victims and their families are often excluded from the
criminal justice system. Thanks to the victim's right movement, 28 states
have now passed laws allowing victims to address the court after a conviction.
The Ertmans and Penas were the first in Texas to exercize this new right.
Other reforms are still needed. Victims should have the right
to be informed of all criminal justice proceedings concerning their cases
and should have the right to be protected against intimidation.
From the moment a crime is reported to its ultimate resolution, victims often feel like they are not treated fairly by the criminal justice system. While those accused of crimes are informed of all new developments in their cases, victims are usually left wondering if their case has been dropped, plea bargained away, or put on the back burner. As a result, many victims don't even bother to report crimes. According to the Department of Justice, only 38 percent of all crimes in the U.S. are actually reported to police.
