Analysis of Crime Victims' Rights Act (CVRA) and Its Impact on Federal Investigations

2014] CRIME VICTIMS’ RIGHTS 103 victims.”° The decision by state legislators to extend notification or conferral rights to crime victims demonstrates an express recognition that crime victims’ meaningful participation in the criminal justice process may involve granting those victims rights before indictment. CONCLUSION Crime victims have important rights at stake in the criminal justice process, even before prosecutors formally file criminal charges. It is hardly surprising, therefore, to find that a federal law that Congress in fact designed to create “broad and encompassing” rights for victims protects victims during a criminal investigation. As this Article has explained, interpreting the CVRA to cover crime victims during the pre-charging phase of a case is consistent with the statute’s purposes, text, legislative history, and interpretive case law. And state criminal justice systems also appear to be moving in that direction. The Justice Department’s contrary interpretation seems unlikely to prevail when challenged. The CVRA signals a paradigm shift in the way that crime victims are to be treated, at least within the federal criminal justice system. Before enactment of the law, federal investigators and prosecutors might have been able to keep victims at arm’s length, refusing to confer with them about the case and otherwise ignoring or even mistreating them during the process. But those days are over. The CVRA promises victims that they now have the right to confer with prosecutors and the right to be treated fairly while their cases are investigated. It is time for the Department of Justice to recognize and embrace that new reality. °55 See Jeffrey A. Pamess et al., Monetary Recoveries for State Crime Victims, 58 CLEV. St. L. REv. 819, 850 (2010); Tobolowsky, supra note 221, at 59 (describing a “significant expansion of victim rights to be consulted by the prosecutor and heard by the court”). HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_014082