A Georgia state legislator, Rep. Bobby Franklin, has introduced state legislation providing that the term ‘victim’ should not be used in rape prosecutions until after a conviction. http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/02/georgia-republicans-bill-would-reclassify-rape-victims-as-accusers/.
This is hardly a new fight. Criminal defense attorneys routinely argue that the term ‘victim’ is conclusory; there is no victim unless there has been a crime, and the point of a criminal trial is to decide whether there was a crime. To say that there is a ‘victim’ before the defendant has been convicted violates the long-standing presumption that the defendant is innocent until guilt is proved to a jury beyond a reasonable doubt.
There is no consensus on whether the term ‘victim’ can be used in a criminal trial, partly because it can refer to a person occupying a particular role in the legal process, in addition to referring to a person against whom a crime was committed. So, I have a motion I file when the issue comes up, but I don’t always win it. I would be thrilled if the courts, or the legislature, were to prohibit the use of the term ‘victim’ during a criminal trial. But Rep. Franklin appears to be a far-right wingnut; Wikipedia says that he sponsored a bill to require taxes to be paid in gold and silver pursuant to Article I, Section 10 of the U.S. Constitution. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bobby_Franklin.
I could get over my concerns about Rep. Franklin’s lucidity, except that I don’t understand why the term ‘victim’ should be forbidden in rape trials and permitted in robbery trials. I don’t usually expect support for criminal defendants’ rights to come from the red side of the political spectrum, and this doesn’t look like an exception. Rather than, say, anti-government libertarianism (which is sometimes favorable to criminal defense), it looks like misogyny. See http://jezebel.com/5752807/conservative-lawmakers-no-longer-attempting-to-disguise-the-fact-that-they-hate-women for more on the feminist angle. I suppose that, given the choice between a law that prohibited the use of the term ‘victim’ in rape prosecutions and permitting the term in any criminal trial, I’d regard the limited prohibition as a step in the right direction. But if it’s a good idea to prohibit the use of the term ‘victim’ in a criminal trial (and it is), then it’s a good idea in every criminal trial, not just for crimes that, as Jezebel writer Morning Gloria points out, are committed disproportionately against women.
