VAWA Posts:
Domestic abuse statistics flawed
Common standards for data lacking
Press-Register (Mobile, AL)
January 1, 1996
https://infoweb.newsbank.com/
COLUMBUS, Ohio - Every month, police officers around the country meticulously compile bundles of domestic violence statistics and dutifully ship them off to state capitals.
You could call it a conscientious effort to comply with state law. You could also call it a waste of time.
That's because many other police departments regularly fail to report the same kinds of calls and arrests, making statewide totals meaningless. And those who do make reports use assorted definitions for basic categories, making comparisons impossible.
``How do you begin to interpret the data? There's just no way to do it,'' said Nancy Neylon, executive director of the Ohio Domestic Violence Network.
The result, advocates say, is inadequate, inaccurate vital information policy makers need to halt the beatings and humiliations and degradation suffered by too many Americans, the great majority of them women. Without accurate statistics, they say, they also have no way to know whether their existing efforts are working.
``It's very difficult to develop good public policy and good programs if you don't have good data on what's going on at the local level,'' said Anne Menard, director of the National Resource Center on Domestic Violence in Harrisburg, Pa.
Ohio isn't alone. A national survey suggests other states struggle with similar problems as officials become increasingly interested in hard data.
Many states have trouble getting police departments to assemble statistics, said Jim Zepp, computer center director for the Justice Research and Statistics Association, a private organization that conducted the survey for the U.S. Department of Justice.
Of the 44 states and territories responding to the survey, 33 complained about poor participation and 39 reported getting incomplete entries, Zepp said. Release of the survey has been delayed by the government shutdown.
Hard national data on domestic violence are scarce. The survey hoped to determine what information is available as the federal government begins distributing money to fight domestic violence. Under the national Violence Against Women Act, each state gets $426,364.
Bottom line: If states cannot produce meaningful numbers, national numbers can never be accurate.
``We want to be able to tell what happens to arrests over time with different kind of policies,'' said Menard of the national center in Harrisburg.
``It is going to be very difficult for us to ever answer the question, `Is domestic violence in this country going down?' if we don't have good baseline data that tells us the incidence of domestic violence now.''
OHIOAN IS FIRST CHARGED UNDER HARASSMENT ACT
AUTHORITIES SAY THREATS WERE MAILED TO EX-WIFE
January 21, 1996
Columbus Dispatch, The (OH)
https://infoweb.newsbank.com/
The day before he was arrested on federal domestic violence charges, Wayne Hayes, a 64-year-old airplane restorer from Knox County, was on the phone bragging to a friend about the beautiful young model he had met in New York.
Ray Brandly said the conversation sticks in his mind, mostly as an example of Hayes' indifference for the crisis at hand.
FBI agents were about to make Hayes the first man in the country to be charged under the 1994 Violence Against Women Act that makes it a federal crime to cross state lines to violate a protection order.
Investigators say Hayes, who was barred from contact with his 35-year-old former wife and their 5-year-old son, had repeatedly ignored protection orders and maintained a pattern of harassment that included, among other things, parking outside her home and sending her more than 600 letters, many of them filled with threats.
"We tried to talk to him like a friend. We knew that sooner or later, he was going to be in deep, deep trouble," said Brandly, a Hamilton, Ohio, resident and president of the National Waco Club, a group dedicated to the preservation of Waco biplanes.
"He kind of said, 'So what?' He sort of ignored what everybody would say to him, as if he knew better. That's the way he treated us," Brandly said.
Hayes, who restored Wacos, was arrested at his home at 9051 Granville Rd. in Mount Vernon, Ohio, on Dec. 20 and is to be arraigned Monday in U.S. District Court in Brooklyn, Assistant U.S. Attorney Faith Gay said.
He faces one charge under the federal act and three counts of sending threatening letters.
"This is a particularly egregious situation, and clearly it fits what the federal statute is trying to address," Gay said.
Gay said the 1994 law can help eliminate the difficult, often patchwork enforcement that occurs when domestic violence offenses cross jurisdictions.
Hayes was married in 1989 and divorced in 1993 in Mount Vernon. His ex-wife moved to New Jersey and secured protection orders through a family court there.
Many of the threatening letters, however, were mailed to her through a mutual friend in New York, Gay said.
Patricia Hayes contacted the National Organization for Women for help after Mr. Hayes repeatedly violated the protection orders, even after being jailed in New Jersey.
"So often, women cross state lines when they finally want to leave because they want to be as safe as possible - and frequently that means getting as far away as possible," said Julie Goldscheid, a staff attorney for NOW's Legal Defense and Education Fund.
Another provision of the act, invoked four times, allows federal charges to be brought in cases when a person crosses state lines to injure a spouse or domestic partner.
In Hayes' case, the federal charges stop just short of violence, although "there had been direct physical violence in Ohio," said Ronald J. Busch, attorney for Patricia Hayes.
"He wrote over 600 letters to her, ranging from two or three pages to 65 or 70," Busch said. "Some said that he would take care of her, that there would be one less voter in New Jersey, or that he would kidnap the child. Since he has been incarcerated this time, he has written at least one additional threatening letter."
Gay said Hayes' letters alternate between "cajoling love letters and saying, 'Honey, if you don't come back, I'll kill you.' "
Investigators also say Hayes has stalked his former wife, visiting her home and leaving cut-up photographs.
"Every day of her life, she's afraid of this man," Busch said.
Hayes' attorney Robert Weinstein said he foresees a challenge to the federal law, particularly because Hayes has similar charges pending against him in Middlesex County, N.J.
Weinstein said he is "not minimizing the gravity of the allegations" but noted that the charges against Hayes are the "least serious" covered by the federal act.
"There's going to ultimately be an issue as to whether these threats are bluster," Weinstein said.
Brandly said he has no idea whether Hayes has the potential for violence.
"He just seems kind of revengeful," Brandly said. "Most of us who are in the National Waco Club have found out we don't really know Wayne Hayes."
Hayes, a native of Homer, Ohio, in Licking County and retired metallurgist for U.S. Steel, had a dream setup, Brandly said. He had a new shop, a new house and a hangar next to it at the Wynkoop Airport in Knox County.
He now faces up to 20 years in prison and his prized planes are for sale.
"We said, 'How many of us who are in this business wouldn't give anything to have what Wayne Hayes had?' " Brandly said. "Now it's all gone down the drain."
Guest opinion Let 'constructive debate' begin with Biden
Sen. Joseph Biden's recent guest opinion begs a response.
Delaware State News (Dover, DE)
Author/Byline: Bruce Clifford
January 21, 1996
https://infoweb.newsbank.com/
I think everyone is pleased with the results of the portion of the Crime Bill which allowed funding for additional ''cops,'' as Sen. Biden calls them. While some communities are struggling with the paperwork and waiting for the bureaucracy to approve their plans, hold on to your wallets. Because what the proponents of the Biden Crime Bill haven't told us and won't tell us is what happens to those newly funded ''cops'' in future years when federal funding ends. If the additional ''cops'' are to be retained, state and/or local taxes are going to have to be raised to keep them employed.
Perhaps the states should have been block-granted the money to put to them to work in ways best suited to their local situation.
Sen. Biden, in his effort to make the Violence Against Women Act ''the law of the land,'' says it is a ''good feeling'' to know the law is providing help to victims of violence. The Act funds training to police, judicial officers and advocates.
Again, a worthy goal; domestic violence should not occur. No one should suffer abuse at the hands of a spouse, parent or child. But tell us, senator, how your Act prevents a husband or wife from striking a spouse? All the training in the world won't stop an individual from beating another. It may help after the fact, but it won't prevent it from happening. So, is ''feel good'' legislation good legislation? Are our tax dollars being spent wisely?
Biden's comment about partisan bickering is right on the mark. Republicans and Democrats both are sick and tired of the name-calling, the misinformation and the inability to have constructive debate without acrimony.
So, Sen. Biden, how about starting with you? How about taking a pledge t o rise above partisanship? And while you're at it, why don't you retract your remarks that ''extremist Republicans'' in the U.S. House would hurt the middle class, that they would ''cripple'' enforcement of environmental laws, and that their ''draconian cuts'' would curb education funding?
Why don't you tell the truth, that there IS a debate taking place about the role of the federal government? On the conservative side, the argument in being made that the federal government has grown too large, too intrusive, wasteful of billions of taxpayers' dollars. Conservatives would argue that state and local governments know better the need of their communities and can better serve those needs. The liberal side of the debate seems to be that the federal government is better suited to determine state and local needs and administer those needs from the federal bureaucracy.
Why don't you tell the truth? When you say ''governing is the art of compromise,'' you really mean Republicans (new House members) aren't offering to compromise with Democrats.
If you could bring yourself to tell the whole truth, you would admit that when Democrats were in the majority, they did not readily compromise with Republicans.
Senator, your conclusion is correct -- Americans must be open to new SL: CLIFFORD Senate majority are doing.
Liberals must also be open to new thinking. Biden's policies of the past 40 years have failed. As a member of the majority party for so many years, he bears a responsibility for that failure -- and I would think his reflection depends on his being able to define how he can redirect his efforts and vision for Delawareans to reduce our tax burden and streamline government to be responsive, efficient and customer-friendly.
I think you're going to be surprised at the large number of voters who think you're not up to the task. Being entrenched in the Washington mindset that says power and money should rest with the federal bureaucracy may lead to your defeat.
EDITOR'S NOTE: Bruce Clifford has owned an insurance agency in Dover, where he resides, for 11 years.
Biden's policies of the past 40 years have failed. As a member of the majority party for so many years, he bears a responsibility for that failure...
-- Bruce Clifford
YOUR OPINION
Island AAUW branch re-examining its support of Rep. Susan Molinari
Staten Island Advance (NY)
January 22, 1996
https://infoweb.newsbank.com/
The members of the Staten Island branch of the American Association of University Women have had to re-examine their support of Congresswoman Susan Molinari.
It is disappointing that Rep. Molinari has forsaken just about every commitment she had made to her constituents. It has always been our assumption that elected officials owe some loyalty to the very people who helped elect them to public office. Ms. Molinari's about-face has affected many critical areas of concern to us. Let's look at the record:
Ms. Molinari was proud to be pro-choice but she has voted against reproductive rights, an issue that clearly should not be legislated but must be left to a woman's judgment. Will Ms. Molinari's doctor be arrested as a felon if he (or she) must decide to save her life during her pregnancy? We sincerely hope she will never have to face that moral dilemma. But what will happen to those women who might not be so lucky?
Ms. Molinari claims to want a crime-free society for her child but voted for the crime bill only after it was weakened and Staten Islanders strongly expressed their dissatisfaction with her vote.
Our congresswoman has sided with the gun lobbyists who support the ownership of assault weapons despite the fact that Americans have clearly expressed fears for their safety because of the proliferation of gun possession. Vast numbers of children and women are victims of the gun lobby's pay-off to legislators.
Finally, Ms. Molinari voted against affirmative action, the very bill that protects women and minorities in their quest for equality in the work place and in our schools. So much for gender equity!
If Rep. Molinari thinks that following the dicta of Newt Gingrich is the way to re-election, women must disabuse her of that notion -- and they will.
LISA BALISTRERI, Great Kills (The writer is the president of the Staten Island chapter of the American Association of University Women.)
Congresswoman says criticism based on misunderstanding of facts
I was astounded to read a letter recently sent to me and the Advance from Lisa Balistreri of the local American Association of University Women chapter regarding four votes that she asserts have taken place over the last four years.
Ms. Balistreri is just plain wrong about her facts, which leaves me confused about her motivations. Of the four votes she considers problematic, one was taken before the last election and two have not happened. Let me be more specific.
First off, Ms. Balistreri correctly asserts that I voted for a ban on a certain abortion procedure called "partial-birth" abortions a specific and horrifying procedure that only affects fetuses in their last trimester. After inducing birth, this procedure calls for literally killing 8-month-old fetuses while still in the birth canal and collapsing their skulls after vacuuming their brains out. Even Ed Koch said recently that he would have voted the way I did and called the procedure "appalling."
Second, Ms. Balistreri has a problem with the fact that I held up the crime bill during the last Congress until, she said, I could "soften" it. In reality, I fought for provisions that now make it easier to convict repeat rapists, call for mandatory HIV testing for rapists and insists on community notification of sexual predators.
Most people think those changes toughened the bill considerably, and it is my understanding that most members of the AAUW supported my position and were happy with the results of my negotiations. In addition, in this Congress, we have been able to push through a 500-percent increase in funding for the Violence Against Women Act.
Third, Ms. Balistreri asserts, again incorrectly, that I have sided with "gun lobbyists who support the ownership of assault weapons." I challenge her to show even one instance where I have supported assault weapons. She can't. I have consistently stood against my party's leadership regarding the assault weapons ban.
Finally, Ms. Balistreri also states that I have voted against affirmative action, but in fact, there hasn't even been a single vote on this issue during this Congress, or the last one either.
She is partially correct in that this program, after 30 years, has met its intended goals of bringing fairness and equality to our society. I have, therefore, co-sponsored a measure that would end the practice of preferential treatment toward any specific group by expressly prohibiting any government discrimination based on sex, race or national origin.
I have a tremendous amount of respect for the Staten Island Chapter of AAUW, and I sincerely hope this helps set the record straight for a continued, cooperative relationship.
Rep. SUSAN MOLINARI, Washington, D.C.
Alleged stalker pleads innocent in NYC
UPI (USA)
January 22, 1996
https://infoweb.newsbank.com/
An Ohio man who was the first person charged under a federal anti-stalking statute pleaded not guilty Monday at an arraignment in Brooklyn federal court. Wayne Hayes, who was denied bail, was arrested in December under the 1994 Violence Against Women Act, which makes it illegal to cross state lines to violate an order of protection.
Prosecutors said Hayes, who lives in a suburb of Columbus, sent threatening letters to his ex-wife Patricia Hayes at the Long Island home of a mutual friend. He allegedly also left threatening notes on the windshield of her car outside her New Jersey home. Patricia Hayes had obtained two orders of protection against her ex- husband, but he allegedly violated them several times. In an affidavit, she said that his letters are 'filled on one hand with professed love and on the other hand with threats of violence.' She said she divorced her husband in 1993 because he was emotionally and physically abusive. Hayes' attorney Robert Weinstein asked the judge Monday to release his client on bail, claiming 'there was no physical harm, only threats. ' But Judge Charles Sifton called Hayes a 'potential danger' to his ex-wife and ordered him held without bail. Wayne Hayes, a 62-year-old former airline mechanic, faces up to 20 years in prison if convicted under the statute, which was passed by Congress two years ago as part of an omnibus crime bill. A trial date was set for Feb. 26.
BATTERED IMMIGRANTS HAVE WAY OUT IN GROUP
New York Daily News (NY)
January 24, 1996
https://infoweb.newsbank.com/
"Anna" knew she had to get away from her husband. He beat her. He wrecked her car. At one point, he held her hostage.
"He punched me in my face, he put a hot knife all over my arms," the 35-year-old woman said as she rolled up her sleeves to show wide, darkened marks on her forearm. Afraid and ashamed, she asked that her name and the name of her homeland not be published.
After every beating, she said, came an apology and a promise to try harder and do better. And, as many battered women do, Anna believed things would get better, only to learn all too soon that the cycle of abuse would begin again.
Besides his fists, Anna's husband had another weapon he used against her a green card allowing him permanent, legal residence in the U.S. It is something Anna does not have.
She feared deportation if she reported the abuse a scenario that counselors to many immigrant women see over and over again.
"That's a common situation," said Mary Ellen Ros, director of immigrant services for the New York Association for New Americans.
"While the process for getting a green card isn't complete, the husband is battering her. She now is his hostage and she could remain in the relationship forever with him holding it over her," Ros said.
The association sees lots of immigrant women like Anna each year. The women are in need of legal services and a range of social programs, including family violence intervention.
The association offers help in 17 languages. The program is specifically designed around the needs of immigrant women.
It also is providing training to other nonprofit, social service groups to expand their services to immigrant women.
"Can you imagine the barriers these women face?" Ros said. "Here are women with no language or job skills. They don't know where to go for help. They fear being deported," Ros said.
But it is unlikely there will be help within the woman's family. Ros said support systems are fragile at best and often very far away.
Anna did not go to the police because she doubted they would believe her story. Outside the home, her husband was a model citizen. No one would imagine that he was a wife-beater inside the house, she thought.
Lisa Kohomban, who works with many of the immigrant women, said there is no way to measure how pervasive domestic violence is among immigrants.
While the exact numbers are not known, the federal government saw a growing problem and provided some assistance through the so-called battered spouse waiver, part of the Immigration and Naturalization Authorization of 1990.
The waiver makes it possible for an immigrant to petition to be given permanent residence without her spouse's cooperation if physical or mental abuse can be proven.
Another piece of legislation, the Violence Against Women Act, also makes it possible for a woman to petition for permanent residency.
That is what Anna is doing. She feels she has to. "I had my own home, my own car. There was no reason to come to the United States," Anna lamented, adding that she is still very concerned about her safety.
She has turned to the association for help in obtaining her green card and employment-related visas. If need be, the agency will also offer help with deportation and exclusion proceedings.
But there is a price to pay. "I still have nightmares," Anna said. "Every time I hear there is a domestic violence case, I start thinking, 'Oh my God, that could be me.' "
Kohomban said she also has nightmares about all the suffering many of her clients saw as they were trying to turn their lives around.
But both women said they are glad that Anna is no longer in danger and appealed to women in a similar position to seek help.
Justice OKs programs for abused women
UPI (USA)
January 25, 1996
https://infoweb.newsbank.com/
Attorney General Janet Reno said Thursday the Justice Department has approved Violence Against Women programs in the 56 states and territories, but funding remains in limbo due to the budget war. For fiscal 1995, Congress approved $26 million for the VAW Services, Training, Officers and Prosecution program.
Justice gave $426,000 to each state to put together their individual programs. But the $170 million needed to fund the VAW program this year is caught up in the budget dispute between President Clinton and Congress. Reno, Health and Human Services Secretary Donna Shalala and Bonnie Campbell, director of the Justice Department's VAW Office, were meeting Thursday with the 46-member Violence Against Women Advisory Council, whose members include actress Susan Dey and advice columnist Ann Landers. The council is coming up with 'creative ideas that we can implement, and can be implemented by citizens around the country, to help really address the problem of domestic violence and sexual assault,' Reno said. The Violence Against Women Act was passed along party lines by the Democratic majority in Congress in 1994, and was part of Clinton's omnibus crime bill. The programs contained in the crime legislation were supposed to have been paid for by the reductions in federal employees -- about 250,000 of them -- ordered by Clinton in the first three years of his presidency. But the provisions of the VAW Act, and the initiative to put 100,000 new police officers on the nation's streets, have met with resistance from the Republicans who now control Congress and include balancing the budget among their top priorities.
Rights suit in rape case confronts college system
Gainesville Sun, The (FL)
February 11, 1996
https://infoweb.newsbank.com/
FAIRFAX, Va. - When Kenneth and Mary Ellen Brzonkala delivered their 18-year-old daughter, Christy, to college in the fall of 1994, a giant aerial photograph of the campus stayed behind in her childhood room here, displayed by her high school basketball trophies and a collage of smiling classmates at the prom.
The photograph of Virginia Polytechnic & State University, known as Virginia Tech, shows a serene pattern of lecture halls, sports fields and dormitories nestled securely in the Blue Ridge Mountains. Yet within weeks of starting there, the Brzonkalas' effervescent daughter grew so withdrawn that she seemed afraid to leave her dorm room.
Finally, in a telephone call last April, she broke down and told her worried parents why.
"She just blurted it out," Mrs. Brzonkala said this week. "She said, 'I'm just calling to tell you that I was raped."'
At their urging, and with a rape counselor's support, Christy agreed to bring a confidential university disciplinary complaint against the young men she identified as her assailants: two freshmen football players, both residents of her dormitory.
Today she stands at the center of a groundbreaking federal lawsuit against the two student athletes and the university. It is the first civil case brought under the 1994 Violence Against Women Act, which recognized crimes against women as a deprivation of civil rights and gave individuals a right to sue for damages in federal court.
Her lawsuit also challenges the secret disciplinary systems used by colleges across the country to deal privately with thousands of student offenses from petty theft to gang rape.
The case is at the intersection of some of the nation's most controversial issues in civil rights law, higher education, sports and journalism. And Christy Brzonkala, who was once too ashamed and traumatized to confide even in her parents, is now willing to publicize her case by name not only in print, but on television.
The federal lawsuit, filed in Richmond, Va., seeks $8.3 million from the university and the two students, Antonio J. Morrison and James L. Crawford. Both have denied wrongdoing. Morrison, son of a former high school coach, contends Brzonkala consented to sex with him. Crawford, his roommate, denies any participation. Because the men are black and she is white, the case is caught in racial cross-currents that run as deep in Thomas Jefferson's state as anywhere in the nation.
But the vision of civil rights that shapes the lawsuit is colored by sex, not race. The $8.3 million damage claim is the amount Virginia Tech's Division 1 college football team collected for competing in the Sugar Bowl in December. Brzonkala's lawyer, Eileen Wagner, has used the figure as a symbolic gauntlet thrown down to challenge the culture of male athletics, and the money, prestige and power it commands in higher education.
She contends that Virginia Tech subverted its confidential judicial process to put Brzonkala at a disadvantage for the benefit of its male football team, in violation of Title IX laws that bar sex discrimination in schools accepting federal money.
The university, which denies any bias, cleared Crawford after a teammate came forward as an alibi witness, and set aside a one-year suspension meted out to Morrison by two administrative panels.
The Brzonkalas learned of the reinstatement in August from the sports pages of The Washington Post, after the football coach announced the return of Morrison, a reserve linebacker on a four-year athletic scholarship. Brzonkala immediately withdrew from Virginia Tech. She now attends George Mason University, four miles from her parents' home.
"Because he's an athlete, he got off," she told the Virginia Tech student newspaper, Collegiate Times, in a Nov. 28 article that caused a campus outcry against the administration.
The lawsuit seeks to bar Virginia Tech from handling sexual-assault complaints through its internal judicial process, which is similar to those used by most colleges.
Such hearings, originally devised to deal with offenses such as cheating, have increasingly become a forum of choice for complaints of sexual assault, said Vickie Mistr, a former member of the State Council of Higher Education of Virginia, who in 1991 helped design the first college training program for the adjudication of sexual-assault cases.
In the family's home on a quiet cul-de-sac in this prosperous suburb of Washington, D.C., her parents worry about the unforeseen consequences of bringing a lawsuit with a life of its own. But they are resolute.
"We felt it was important for her to pursue it, not just for her, but for all the kids on campus," said her father, a federal government worker.
TECH FORCED TO RELEASE TRANSCRIPT OF HEARINGS
Roanoke Times, The (VA)
February 24, 1996
https://infoweb.newsbank.com/
AS THE LEGAL PROCESS moves along in a Virginia Tech student's lawsuit against two football players she says raped her, the attorney general's office explains the unusual decision to ask for a state police investigation.
A state police investigation requested by the attorney general into rape allegations by former Virginia Tech student Christy Brzonkala began this week.
Meanwhile, a judge on Friday ordered Tech to turn over audiotapes and transcripts of campus judicial hearings to Brzonkala's attorney by Monday. Brzonkala is suing Tech and two football players she says raped her.
The transcripts are of hearings held last year by Tech administrative officers to decide whether football players Tony Morrison and James Crawford raped Brzonkala in the fall of 1994.
A Tech judicial panel found insufficient evidence against Crawford but found Morrison guilty of sexual misconduct and suspended him for two semesters. A second hearing found him guilty of using abusive language and imposed the same suspension. The provost then reduced his punishment to probation and Brzonkala sued.
Morrison has said that anything that happened between him and Brzonkala was consensual.
Morrison's attorney, David Paxton of Roanoke, said Friday he was not aware of the order about the audiotapes until after it was entered. He said he planned to ask Monday that the recordings be restricted to use in Brzonkala's civil case and not be released to the media or others.
Chief U.S. District Judge Jackson Kiser also gave Brzonkala's attorney, Eileen Wagner, until March 1 to file an amended lawsuit that she indicated might include new parties and change the nature of her claims against Tech. A hearing on Tech's motion to dismiss the suit, set for Wednesday, was continued until March 6.
Brzonkala's claims against Tech and the football players hinge on allegations that they acted toward her in a discriminatory way because she is female. She would not have been raped, feared for her safety or lost three semesters of schooling if she were not a woman, the suit says. Part of her suit is based on the Violence Against Women Act of 1994, which has never been tested in court.
In his own motion to dismiss the suit, Paxton asked Kiser to find the act unconstitutional because it is too broad. Paxton has filed motions in the case even though his client is not yet officially part of the suit.
"The case is in a very unusual procedural posture" because Wagner has not had legal papers served on Morrison to officially notify him and make him part of the suit, Paxton said. "This is a very unusual situation."
In another odd twist in the case, Attorney General Jim Gilmore volunteered to request a state police investigation into the alleged rape. Brzonkala didn't pursue criminal charges, choosing instead to use Tech's internal judicial process to resolve the case. Because she had waited months to come forward with her allegation, she has explained, there was no physical evidence and she feared police wouldn't believe her.
Gilmore's spokesman said punishing sexual assault has long been a priority for the attorney general. He conducted two tours of college campuses to hear from students last year and used information learned there to propose legislation in the General Assembly, Mark Miner said.
"He's made this a priority of his administration to crack down on sexual assault," Miner said. "It's an issue he wants looked into."
Because Tech is a state institution, Gilmore technically is an attorney for the university, giving him an interest on both sides of the issue. But the attorney general's office has the authority to deal with issues that conflict, as happens in many cases, Miner said.
Thomas Morris, a political analyst and president of Emory & Henry College, agreed, although he said it's unusual. He has written several studies on the powers of attorneys general.
"It's not the norm; it's clearly the exception. His normal responsibility is to represent the state," Morris said. "First and foremost, he's the attorney for the state, but he's also the legal protector of the citizenry. Occasionally, the attorney general may have to choose."
Paxton, representing Morrison, said he questions the move.
"I have a lot of questions why that happened the way it happened," he said. "But I have to refrain from speculating because it isn't particularly beneficial" to Morrison.
Tech spokesman Larry Hincker agreed it's an "oddity" that state police are investigating what is normally a function of local police after a victim makes an immediate complaint.
But, he said, "we welcome anything that clears the air.
"We tried to be as fair as we possibly could to two students," he said, but it was "an extremely difficult, very murky" case. With what he has learned about date rape, "this is probably more typical than not" of such cases.
The state police investigation is specifically focused on gathering evidence about whether a rape occurred, and not on Tech's actions afterward.
The state police interviewed Brzonkala this week, but Assistant Special Agent in Charge Bob Perry said it's too early to know what the investigation will entail. "You never know where an investigation will go."
Although Gilmore launched the investigation, the attorney general has no authority to bring rape charges under Virginia law. The decision to prosecute will be Montgomery County Commonwealth Attorney Phil Keith's.
"It's a very fascinating commentary that the attorney general's office is a legal-slash-political office" and has to make judgments on both bases, Morris said. "It doesn't come up very often."
REP. MOLINARI WANTS CONTROVERSIAL JUDGE REMOVED
CONGRESSWOMAN WANTS GOVERNOR TO IMPEACH BROOKLYN CRIMINAL COURT JUDGE LORIN DUCKMAN
Staten Island Advance (NY)
February 24, 1996
https://infoweb.newsbank.com/
WASHINGTON -- Republican Rep. Susan Molinari and a liberal Democratic colleague here from New York have asked Gov. Pataki and Senate Republicans to sack Brooklyn Criminal Court Judge Lorin Duckman for releasing a jealousy-consumed ex-convict who then murdered his estranged girlfriend.
"Judge Duckman has failed to treat domestic violence seriously," wrote Ms. Molinari and Rep. Nita Lowey of the Bronx in letters yesterday to Pataki and state Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno of Saratoga Springs.
The two congresswomen contended that Duckman was "unfit to serve on the state court, and we urge you to begin removal proceedings."
The judge's removal has also been urged by Mayor Rudolph Giuliani and a number of other elected officials in the city.
Duckman has been under attack since freeing Benito Oliver, a convicted rapist who had been arrested for beating and threatening to kill his ex-girlfriend, Galina Komar. A short time later, he shot to her to death while she was working at her job as a secretary at a car dealership.
At a hearing at which Duckman released Oliver despite Ms. Komar's request that he be kept in custody for her protection, the judge dismissed her beating injuries a minor, saying she had been "bruised but not disfigured." Then Duckman also insisted that Oliver was upset mainly because she would not return his dog to him.
"Judge Duckman's shocking failure to adequately protect Galina Komar and his outrageous statements about domestic violence should disqualify him . . . ," Reps. Molinari and Lowey said.
They also said that although Congress had recently approved funding for a range of new programs to combat domestic violence, "we will not be able to win the war . . . with judges like Lorin Duckman."
The funding was authorized in the Violence Against Women Act, co-sponsored by the two House members.
Bruno has said he will ask the Senate to consider Duckman's removal after Pataki "sees fit to send us that recommendation."
Pataki has called Duckman's behavior a "disgrace" but said that he will have to "take a hard look" at his overall record before deciding whether to seek his impeachment. Only four state judges have been removed in the last 125 years.
In a separate statement, Ms. Lowey said it was "time for Judge Duckman to go," and added that "when victims of domestic violence become victims of the judicial process, changes need to be made."
Ms. Molinari said it was "a little frustrating when our victories against domestic violence on national and state fronts are undermined by the type of cavalier attitude displayed by Duckman."
Duckman has declined comment. Supporters have described him as bright, although somewhat eccentric, and argued that it is unfair to condemn a judge for a single ruling, especially when he handles a large number of domestic violence cases, whose outcomes can never be foreseen.
Lack of budget agreement may eliminate funding
Anti-violence programs threatened
Brownsville Herald, The (TX)
Author/Byline: BELINDA C. MENDOZA - executive director of Friendship of Women Inc., a shelter for victims of domestic violence
February 25, 1996
https://infoweb.newsbank.com/
The deadlock in congressional budget deliberations threatens to abandon a commitment to
My turn anti-domestic violence programs and initiatives that was made by Congress only a year ago. While the anti-violence initiative continues to enjoy strong, bipartisan support, the lack of a budget agreement may inadvertently eliminate funding for the programs at the core of the legislation.
The Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) was the first comprehensive piece of federal legislation to address domestic violence, which strikes an estimated 3-4 million women each year. Since passage of the act, public awareness and concern for the plague of violence in American homes has drastically increased. With an increase in awareness comes an increase in demand for services and without authorized funds, domestic violence programs will have trouble meeting the demand.
The budget dispute has left the federal government operating at FY '95 levels under the authority of "continuing resolutions." But the only programs funded under VAWA in FY '95 were small grants to the states to begin planning efforts, as well as start-up money for the National Domestic Violence Hotline, and limited funding for battered women's shelters. Other programs like a model education program for young people to learn to prevent domestic violence, and increased funding for shelters, are not getting the money they were promised and desperately need.
If the current situation persists, victims of domestic violence will pay the price. For example, the National Domestic Violence Hotline is due to go into operation in late February, but without funding for adequate shelter space, victims can make a phone call but may find that shelters are filled to capacity. What's more, as police officers are trained and judges are better informed and educated about domestic violence, there will be more referrals and demand for support services and shelter space.
Battered Women's shelters and other supportive programs, to help stop the cycle of violence, are important to Brownsville. Our state Sen. Eddie Lucio and Rep. Rene Oliveira should fully support funding for Violence Against Women Act Programs.
Letter campaign to push for Violence Against Women Act
Houston Chronicle (TX)
March 22, 1996
https://infoweb.newsbank.com/
When President Clinton unveiled the Violence Against Women Act early in his term, activists around the country hailed it as a groundbreaking attempt by government to curb domestic abuse and sexual assault. The act included language that would appropriate funds to educate the public about family violence and help agencies that serve survivors of family violence and rape.
Today, however, that legislation remains just that - legislation.
The appropriation of funds for the Violence Against Women Act has stalled in Congress, despite the fact that funds would come from previously earmarked dollars.
The Houston Area Women's Center is among a nationwide network of advocates that is asking those concerned about violence against women and children to take part in Mail-Drop on Washington Day on April 1.
The National Coalition Against Sexual Assault asks that you write or fax a letter to your legislator urging him or her to vote for full funding of the Violence Against Women Act, as well as continued funding and legislative commitment to this issue.
Here is a sample letter: I am writing this letter to voice my support for full funding for the Violence Against Women Act, as well as other funding for agencies that work to end violence against women and children or to help the survivors of this violence.
In order to ensure an April 1 arrival, letters must be mailed by March 28.
For more information, call the Women's Center at 528-6798.
TESTING THE LEGAL LIMITS
A FEDERAL JUDGE IN ROANOKE IS BEING ASKED TO DECIDE THE CONSTITUTIONALITY OF THE VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN ACT
Roanoke Times, The (VA)
March 24, 1996
https://infoweb.newsbank.com/
PRESIDENT Clinton signed the Violence Against Women Act into law Sept. 13, 1994. Nine days later, Christy Brzonkala says she was raped in a dorm room at Virginia Tech.
Brzonkala is one of the first women in the country to use the law, which allows crime victims targeted because of their gender to sue their attackers for violating their civil rights.
As her case begins its path through federal court, one of the football players she's suing is challenging not just her story but the law. Tony Morrison is asking a judge to declare the Violence Against Women Act unconstitutional.
To win her case, Brzonkala will have to prove not only that she was raped by Morrison and his roommate, James Crawford, but that she was more than a random target of violence. She must prove that the rape occurred because she is a woman and that it was motivated at least in part by hostility toward women.
Rape is "absolutely gender-motivated," said Eileen Wagner of Richmond, Brzonkala's attorney. "Because you pick the least able to cry out, the one most likely to be blamed for reporting it."
But one opponent of the law says its emphasis on gender is wrongheaded.
"It trivializes the victim and the offense and the offender because they all become a metaphor for the gender war - because they're all individuals in their own right," said Michael Greve, executive director of the Center for Individual Rights in Washington . "Feminists want to transform every single random act of meanness into ... a federal class-based hate crime."
Brzonkala's case has attracted widespread attention, and national groups concerned about the new law's application in civil cases are watching it closely.
As part of the omnibus crime bill of 1994, the Violence Against Women Act made gender-motivated crime a civil-rights violation. Laws already existed against gender-based crimes committed in the workplace - such as sexual harassment - but not for such crimes committed in the home or on the street.
No new criminal penalties were created, but the law allows victims - male or female - to sue their attackers if they can prove they were not random targets, but were chosen because of their gender. The attack against them also must be a felony, whether felony charges are actually filed or not.
The creation of new civil rights was just a small part of a wide-ranging bill that won bipartisan, almost-unanimous support in both houses of Congress. It authorized $1.6 billion for law enforcement, public safety improvements and rape-education programs. Virginia received $426,000 last year for training police and prosecutors, and "far more money" will be appropriated this year, a Justice Department spokesman said.
But Roanoke lawyer David Paxton, who represents Morrison, argues that Congress exceeded its authority when it granted civil-rights remedies to victims of gender-motivated crimes. He wants U.S. District Judge Jackson Kiser to declare that part of the law unconstitutional and dismiss the suit against Morrison.
And even if Kiser does not find the law unconstitutional, Brzonkala's alleged rape would not qualify under it, Paxton said.
"These kinds of claims were simply not envisioned by Congress when they passed this statute," Paxton told Kiser at a hearing this month. "The Violence Against Women Act doesn't provide remedy for every rape or assault."
Brzonkala charges that Morrison and his roommate, James Crawford, raped her in their dorm room when she and a friend visited them after a party. She also is suing Tech, over its handling of the players' disciplinary proceedings, and another football player, Cornell Brown, who she claims helped cover up the crime by providing Crawford an alibi.
At the heart of this dispute is this question: Is rape - whose victims are almost exclusively women - inherently a crime motivated by gender and animosity toward women?
In his motion to dismiss Brzonkala's case, Paxton cites an abortion case decided by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1993. The court said that although women are the only ones who get pregnant and are therefore the targets of abortion protests, "it does not automatically follow that the protesters were singling the patrons of the abortion clinic out for action because of their gender," his brief says.
Paxton applies that reasoning to argue that simply proving a rape occurred isn't enough to sue under the law. Rather, there must be specific allegations that the attackers were motivated by a hatred of women.
Supporters of the Violence Against Women Act agree that more than rape has to be proved. Brzonkala will have to show that her rights were violated and that her freedoms were curtailed, and she has to make the case that the crime was committed because she's a woman, said Leslie Wolfe, president of the Center for Women Policy Studies in Washington, D.C.
Wolfe doesn't think that will be hard to prove in most rape cases. She and other women's rights advocates believe most - but not necessarily all - rape cases are motivated by gender bias.
"There might be a rapist who rapes men, women, dogs, and simply is a horrible, vicious assaulter," Pat Reuss of the National Organization for Women said. "There might be that person. So you can't say all rapes are gender-based."
But the Violence Against Women Act is based on the idea "that rape is a crime of hate, not a crime of overzealous lust," said Reuss, a senior policy analyst at NOW's Legal and Educational Defense Fund. Reuss was an early lobbyist for the bill.
She said a study found that nearly one out of every three women who dropped out of college their freshman year left after being raped.
"What's facing young men in their freshman year like that?'' Reuss asked. "That's why I maintain it's a hate crime."
Her group recently asked Kiser for permission to file a friend-of-the-court brief defending the law. Such briefs are usually filed at the appeals level rather than the trial court level, but a NOW attorney said the organization wanted to get involved early because this is "very novel litigation and, of course, is of incredible importance."
The Department of Justice - where the legislation created a Violence Against Women policy office - also is reviewing the case to decide whether to become involved, a spokesman said.
On the other side, The Center for Individual Rights, a Washington public-interest law firm, is representing Morrison along with Paxton. That group represented the student who sued the University of Virginia for not funding his Christian magazine with student-activity fees. Last year, he won a major victory when the Supreme Court ruled that UVa violated his free-speech rights.
Greve, the executive director, said the firm opposes special civil-rights laws for gender-motivated crime and for blacks and other groups who seek protection from so-called hate crimes. Such laws neglect the seriousness of the crime by concentrating on the motive or the "disapproved thoughts" that prompted it, he said.
"The danger is not that a rapist is punished too harshly - that I'm not concerned about," he said. "I'm concerned about the trivialization of [the crime]. What it says is we're not interested in this particular individual's conduct ... what's more important is, he represents men."
But men raping men, as in prison rapes, is not gender-motivated, he said. "It makes no sense to me that rape is motivated by hostility toward women as a class. It's a violent crime and a very bad one, for which people should be spending much more time in prison than they are."
Greve's group also argues the law is unconstitutional because it addresses conduct by private citizens, rather than official government conduct, and because it doesn't affect interstate commerce - an area over which Congress has power to legislate.
But NOW argues that the Violence Against Women Act was properly passed under the commerce clause, because gender-based violence has a significant impact on interstate commerce and the national economy. Many women avoid working in particular locations and at certain hours because of fear of crime; fear of violence may deter them from traveling across state lines on business; and women frequently leave their jobs after being victimized, NOW said. When it passed the law, Congress found that nearly half of rape victims either lose their jobs or are forced to quit after the crime.
Brzonkala's attorney, Eileen Wagner, said the offices of Sens. Joe Biden, D-Del., and Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, are following the case. Both senators supported the bill. Hatch, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, plans to hold hearings this spring to see how the law has been implemented, his press secretary said.
Congress passed the law in part to make up for the failure of the criminal justice system to protect victims of gender-motivated crime.
It's similar to what happened when state courts in the South failed to protect the rights of victims of racial discrimination, forcing Congress and the federal courts to get involved, Wolfe says.
Congressional reports detailing the legislative history of the act show that both the House and the Senate agreed "there is a need for a strong and clear federal response to violence against women, particularly with respect to the crime of rape." Congress found that the criminal justice system in the states "further victimized" women who had been raped and that the crime consequently was "severely under-reported."
But Greve said giving victims the right to sue their attackers in no way encourages more reporting of rapes.
Reuss said the biggest opponents of the Violence Against Women Act before it was passed were federal judges.
"Because there are millions of rapes, they were afraid every woman who was raped would run to federal court and file suit," she said.
Wolfe recalls the argument: ```This crime - everybody does it, so do we have to make such a big deal about it?' I find that an appalling position."
Supporters insisted that the courts would not be flooded with cases because few rape victims would want to relive their experiences in federal court.
Brzonkala's case is the first known rape suit brought in the 18 months the law has been on the books. In one of the other two civil cases brought under the law, a Connecticut woman is suing her husband, saying he beat her for 20 years.
Besides creating civil-rights protection in gender-bias cases and providing funding for law enforcement, public safety improvements and rape-education programs, the Violence Against Women Act makes crossing a state line to assault a spouse or domestic partner a federal offense.
The first person prosecuted under the law was a West Virginia man who beat his wife and threw her in the trunk of his car. He drove around two states drunk while she lapsed into a permanent coma. He was sentenced to life in prison.
Those parts of the law Paxton does not take issue with. He is only asking Kiser to find the civil-rights remedy unconstitutional.
Although the Republican Congress left the act's funding almost 90 percent intact this year, Reuss said, there were two areas that got no funding: programs to educate judges on gender bias and the effects of rape on victims; and a study of campus sexual assaults and how they're handled by college administrators.
PROSECUTOR GETS RAPE INQUIRY RESULTS
Roanoke Times, The (VA)
April 4, 1996
https://infoweb.newsbank.com/
State police on Wednesday gave the Montgomery County prosecutor the results of their investigation into former Virginia Tech student Christy Brzonkala's rape allegations against two football players.
Commonwealth's Attorney Phil Keith said he expects to make a decision by early next week on whether there is a "prosecutable case." He said the only charges that could come out of the investigation would be rape charges; the statute of limitations has expired on lesser charges such as sexual battery.
The state police didn't draw any conclusions about the players' guilt or innocence, but simply gave him the facts, Keith said. It will be up to him to decide if there is enough evidence to support prosecution.
Because 18 months have elapsed since the incident and no physical evidence was ever collected, the case likely rests on the recollections and credibility of the participants and witnesses. State police also had access to transcripts from two judicial board hearings held by Tech to decide whether the players' conduct violated the student code. Those transcripts include each party's version of events, before there was the threat of civil or criminal action.
State police spent six weeks investigating Brzonkala's claim that James Crawford and Tony Morrison raped her in their dorm room in September 1994, at the beginning of her freshman year. Both players have maintained their innocence. Crawford said he did not have sex with her. Morrison has said that whatever happened between them was consensual, but will not say publicly whether they had sex.
Last week, police reinterviewed Brzonkala to check inconsistencies in the participants' stories, said her attorney, Eileen Wagner of Richmond. They asked her again where she sat when she came into the players' dorm room that night and how many times she said no to Morrison, Wagner said.
"I can't read a thing into it at all," Wagner said.
She conceded that with no physical evidence of rape, it would be a hard case to win in criminal court, where the burden of proof is higher than in a civil case.
"When you have multiple participants, you really do need physical evidence, and we don't have any," she said. "Prosecutors have to take cases they think they can win."
The belated rape investigation was initiated at the request of Virginia Attorney General Jim Gilmore after Brzonkala filed a civil lawsuit in federal court in December. Gilmore has made sexual assault, particularly on college campuses, a focus of his administration. Gilmore's request was a somewhat unusual move, however; he technically is Tech's attorney, because the school is a state institution.
Brzonkala did not report the alleged rape until the following semester, which precluded physical evidence being collected. Without evidence, she said, she believed her only recourse was to file her complaint with Tech's internal judicial system.
A judicial board found Morrison guilty of sexual misconduct. But it found insufficient evidence against Crawford, who had fellow player Cornell Brown testify as an alibi witness.
A second judicial board, empaneled after Morrison threatened to sue the school, found him guilty of the lesser charge of using abusive language. Brzonkala alleges in her civil suit that after the incident, Morrison told her, "You better not have any fdiseases."
Both judicial boards suspended Morrison for two semesters, but Tech's provost revoked the suspension and allowed him to stay in school. Brzonkala alleges the university discriminated against her and gave Morrison special treatment because he is a man and a football player.
She filed suit against Morrison, Crawford, Brown and Tech. All four defendants have filed motions to dismiss the suit.
Chief U.S. District Judge Jackson Kiser is considering Tech's motion, but will wait until the end of April to consider the three players' motions. He has given outside parties interested in Brzonkala's use of the untested Violence Against Women Act until then to file briefs in support of the law, which the football players claim is unconstitutional. The U.S. Department of Justice and the National Organization for Women have said they will file briefs.
Brzonkala, who lives in Fairfax County, now attends George Mason University.
PLAYERS ARE NOT INDICTED
EX-TECH STUDENT TO PURSUE RAPE CLAIM IN FEDERAL SUIT
Roanoke Times, The (VA)
April 11, 1996
https://infoweb.newsbank.com/
A Montgomery County grand jury declined to indict two Virginia Tech football players Wednesday after hearing the results of a state police investigation of Christy Brzonkala's rape allegations.
The grand jury was convened Wednesday morning especially to hear the state police findings. Those findings are not public, and grand jury proceedings are secret.
State police gave their report to Commonwealth's Attorney Phil Keith, who could have decided to bring charges himself. Instead, he turned the decision over to the grand jury.
"It was a close call whether or not there was probable cause," so he decided to let an independent body judge whether it was more likely than not that Brzonkala was raped, Keith said. "As far as guilt or innocence, it never got to that point."
Brzonkala and the players - Tony Morrison and James Crawford - declined invitations to testify before the grand jury and Keith chose not to subpoena them.
The grand jury's decision does not affect Brzonkala's federal lawsuit against Virginia Tech, the two players and one of their friends, Cornell Brown.
Morrison's attorney said the judge would decide whether a federal jury hearing the civil case could learn about the grand jury's decision.
Brzonkala, now a student at George Mason University, says Morrison and Crawford raped her in their dorm room in September 1994. Her suit claims Brown was in the dormitory suite during the attack and that he provided a false alibi for Crawford during a campus judicial board hearing.
Morrison's and Crawford's attorneys characterized the grand jury's decision as vindication for their clients, who have maintained their innocence.
"When a grand jury refuses to indict, it means there's no probable cause to believe a crime was committed," said Morrison's attorney, David Paxton. "It's a pretty good indication of what people think of the allegations - which is not a whole lot."
This case "probably had more investigating than 99 percent of rape investigations," said Joe Painter, who represents Crawford. "Do you know how unusual it is for a grand jury not to indict when an officer testifies?"
State police investigated for almost two months at the request of Virginia Attorney General Jim Gilmore.
Brzonkala's attorney, Eileen Wagner of Richmond, said she had not expected indictments. Sexual assault cases are uniquely difficult to try, she said, and with a time lapse of 18 months between the incident and the criminal investigation, it wasn't likely charges would be brought.
"I'm gratified that Keith thought the decision was close enough to refer to the grand jury," she said.
Morrison's father, Jim, a Chesapeake teacher, said, "It is good news, but we still have a lot in front of us."
Brzonkala did not seek criminal charges or tell anyone about the incident for several months. Wagner said Brzonkala took her case to Tech's internal judicial system because she felt at the time she had no alternative, as she hadn't had a medical exam afterward and had no physical evidence.
Crawford, who had an alibi, was not disciplined. A Tech judicial panel initially found Morrison guilty of sexual misconduct and suspended him for two semesters. When he appealed, a second panel found him guilty only of using abusive language, but upheld the suspension. The university provost decided to reduce his punishment to probation and one hour of counseling instead.
When Brzonkala learned Morrison would return to campus, she filed suit, claiming Tech gave preferential treatment to him as a football player and discriminated against her. She is also seeking damages from the three players under the untested Violence Against Women Act of 1994, which allows victims of gender-motivated crime to sue their attackers.
Attorney General Gilmore volunteered the state police's services after she filed the highly publicized suit in December.
The Violence Against Women Act does not require a criminal conviction for a victim to bring suit.
"That's why we have the Violence Against Women Act," Wagner said. "With sexual assaults, an awful lot fall through the cracks. One of the things Congress wanted to do [with the law] was close some of those cracks. They wanted people to know if the criminal system can't make a case, they have another" avenue through civil court.
But Wagner praised the state police investigation as "objective, humane, fair and sensitive" and said Keith's office appeared to take the case seriously.
Painter questioned Brzonkala's absence before the grand jury.
"Why didn't she testify - if her whole purpose [in filing suit] is so this doesn't happen to other women?" he asked. "She's told her story to everyone else in the world."
Wagner said she and Brzonkala discussed whether her testifying would help, but decided that "she felt confident in what she told" the state police.
Painter said he believed the rape allegations were based on racism. Brzonkala is white and the three players are black.
"Do you really believe if these were white athletes, there'd be all this hoopla? I don't," he said. "Who are you more likely to believe if someone's going to scream rape - black guys or white guys?"
Painter, who is white, said he has felt this case was racially motivated from the start, but refrained from speaking out while the criminal investigation was being conducted.
Wagner said she was "mystified" by Painter's characterization of what she sees as a male-female issue.
"The facts show the problem was a male member of an all-male athletic team who was given preferential treatment over a female."
WOMAN CHARGED UNDER FEDERAL ABUSE LAW
Buffalo News, The (NY)
April 20, 1996
https://infoweb.newsbank.com/
The wife of a scientist who was bludgeoned to death, then hacked to pieces, will be the first woman charged under a federal domestic abuse law intended to protect women.
Rita Gluzman, 47, is accused of persuading her cousin to participate in the ax murder of Yakov Gluzman on April 7, then dispose of his remains.
The federal charge, which carries a harsher sentence than a state murder charge, comes from the Violence Against Women Act, which was passed by Congress in 1994 as part of an omnibus crime bill. It makes crossing a state line to assault a spouse or domestic partner punishable by up to 20 years in prison for permanent disfigurement or life-threatening injury, and up to life in prison if the victim dies. In the Gluzman case, Mrs. Gluzman is accused of traveling from her home in New Jersey to Gluzman's apartment in Pearl River, Rockland County, to commit the crime.
ALL CLAIM VICTORY IN BUDGET ACCORD
Rocky Mountain News (Denver, CO)
April 26, 1996
https://infoweb.newsbank.com/
Both Republicans and Democrats claimed victory Thursday as Congress approved a bill to fund dozens of federal agencies through the rest of the fiscal year.
Passage closed the books on one of the most contentious budget battles in the nation's history. Large majorities moved the bill: 399-25 in the House and 88-11 in the Senate.
Colorado Republican Hank Brown was one of the ``No'' votes in the Senate, but Republican Ben Nighthorse Campbell voted for the bill.
White House officials said that President Clinton planned to sign it into law by this morning. Although spending authority was to end at midnight Thursday, the government was not to be interrupted.
Republicans applauded themselves for cutting federal spending for fiscal 1996 by $23 billion below last year's level. Combined with $11 billion sliced from the 1995 budget, Republicans claimed credit for $34 billion in cuts since gaining control of Congress.
``When history is finally recorded, we will show we have begun to downsize the cost of government,'' said House Appropriations Committee Chairman Robert Livingston, R-La.
Clinton said he was pleased and called on Republican leaders to resume talks with him that broke down in January on how to balance the entire federal budget within seven years.
Passage of the $160 billion bill came seven months after the start of the fiscal year. It was preceded by the two longest government shutdowns in the nation's history, idling federal workers for a total of 27 days.
AT A GLANCE: BUDGET COMPROMISE BILL
Key provisions of budget compromise:
* Foreign Affairs: An additional $192 million for international organizations and $134 million for peacekeeping.
* Justice Department: Most of what President Clinton sought to complete his program to put 100,000 more police officers on the street. Plus the administration's full request for funding of the Violence Against Women Act and the Drug Enforcement Administration.
* Veterans Affairs Department: Enough to maintain current patient levels if VA health system continues cost-saving measures.
* Education Department: Roughly 2.5% less than for fiscal 1995, excluding student loan programs. Retains three programs targeted by the Republicans: Goals 2000 program, which helps schools improve academic standards; Title I, which gives money to schools teaching poor children; and the Safe and Drug-Free School Program. Cuts funding for vocational education, bilingual and immigrant education, the Perkins Loan program providing campus-based loans for needy students and the State Student Incentive Grants for college students. One of the administration's key victories involved the Direct Student Loan Program, which allows students to borrow college money directly from the federal government, instead of banks.
* Environmental Protection Agency: $700 million less than last year but $817 million more than Congress previously had offered. Increased funding for the Superfund toxic waste cleanup, $500 million for a drinking-water protection revolving fund, and additional funds for environmental inspection and enforcement programs. EPA will continue to regulate protection of wetlands.
* Interior Department: Receives $6.04 billion, about $500 million less than last year. Slightly more money to operate the national park system, a total of just over $1 billion. The Fish and Wildlife Service gets $95 million to run its endangered species program, a 10% cut. But the agency can resume listing new endangered species, ending a moratorium on new listings imposed last year. The government is also allowed to proceed with more protective management of the Mojave National Preserve in California and to impose tighter logging restrictions than sought by congressional Republicans in the Tongass National Forest in Alaska.
LEGAL WIN FOR VA. TECH STUDENT WHO ALLEGES RAPE
Virginian-Pilot, The (Norfolk, VA)
April 27, 1996
https://infoweb.newsbank.com/
The Justice Department on Friday filed court documents defending a federal law being used by a former Virginia Tech student to sue the university and the football players who she alleges raped her.
The players have asked U.S. District Judge Jackson Kiser to dismiss the lawsuit because the law is unconstitutional. A hearing on the motion is scheduled for Wednesday.
The Violence Against Women Act adopted in 1994 lets victims of sex-based crimes recover damages in federal court. The law mirrors federal remedies against racially motivated violence and discrimination.
Christy Brzonkala alleges that Tony Morrison and fellow freshman recruit James Crawford raped her in September 1994 while player Cornell Brown watched. No criminal charges were filed. In a civil suit she is seeking $10 million from Morrison and unspecified damages against the other players and Virginia Tech.
TECH CLEARED IN WOMAN'S LAWSUIT
PLAYERS STILL FACE CIVIL SUIT IN RAPE CASE
Daily Press (Newport News, VA)
May 8, 1996
https://infoweb.newsbank.com/
A federal judge Tuesday dismissed portions of a civil suit filed by a woman who says she was raped by two Virginia Tech football players in 1994.
Citing insufficient evidence, Judge Jackson L. Kiser dismissed the woman's claims against Virginia Tech. Christy Brzonkala, a former student at the school, alleged that Tech discriminated against her based on gender in its handling of her sexual assault case against Tony Morrison and James Crawford.
Brzonkala's attorney, Eileen Wagner, argued that Morrison and Crawford received preferential treatment from Virginia Tech because they are men. But Kiser wrote that the school's ``intent was to allow an athlete to play on its team. The intent was ... based on Morrison's athletic status, not the facts that he is a male and that Brzonkala is a female.''
Virginia Tech judicial hearings cleared Crawford, who denied any sexual contact with Brzonkala. Morrison, who said the sexual intercourse was consensual, was found guilty of sexual assault, a charge that was reduced to abusive conduct on appeal. In each case, hearing officers recommended a one-semester suspension.
But Provost Peggy Meszaros reduced Morrison's penalty to probation in time for him to play football during the 1995 season.
Brzonkala, who did not press criminal charges following the September 1994 incident in the dormitory of Crawford and Morrison, filed the civil suit this January. The suit asks for $10 million in damages from Morrison and unspecified damages from Crawford and teammate Cornell Brown. The suit alleges that Brown aided and abetted the rape by telling Virginia Tech hearing officers that Crawford was with him at the time of the alleged rape.
Brzonkala's claims against the three football players, which cite the federal Violence Against Women Act, are to be argued in Kiser's court June 10.
Publicity surrounding the case prompted the State Police to conduct a criminal probe. The findings were turned over to a grand jury, which declined to charge the football players.
PLAYER OUT OF LAWSUIT
WOMAN ASKS FOR HIS REMOVAL
Roanoke Times, The (VA)
June 4, 1996
https://infoweb.newsbank.com/
Christy Brzonkala's attorney asked a judge to dismiss a Virginia Tech football star as a defendant in her federal lawsuit Monday, saying she recently learned he could not have been present when Brzonkala says she was raped by two other players.
Brzonkala's lawsuit says Cornell Brown provided an alibi for suitemate James Crawford by saying he was with Crawford the night of the alleged rape.The lawsuit included him as a "principal in the second degree," alleging he failed to intervene to prevent a crime.
However, a witness recently said Brown could not have been in his dorm suite the night Brzonkala visited there in September 1994, according to Brzonkala's attorney, Eileen Wagner of Richmond.
Wagner says the new witness bolsters her case by casting doubt on Cornell's credibility.
But defense attorneys say Wagner is simply dropping Brown from the suit before the judge does.
"She never had a case against him," said Brown's attorney, Jane Glenn of Roanoke. She is considering seeking sanctions against Wagner for including Brown in the suit.
Brown, a rising senior, made the All-America team and is a star defensive end at Tech. Defense attorneys have called his inclusion in the lawsuit a publicity stunt.
Brzonkala is suing Crawford and Tony Morrison under the Violence Against Women Act. She says the two football players raped her in their dorm room shortly after she began her freshman year at Tech, in September 1994. She later dropped out of Tech and now attends George Mason University.
Brzonkala also named Tech as a defendant, but Chief U.S. District Judge Jackson Kiser dismissed the university from the suit this spring.
Crawford's attorney said he isn't concerned that the new witness could cast doubt on his client's story. Crawford also had testified at a campus judicial hearing that Brown was with him at the time Brzonkala says she was raped by Crawford, according to the lawsuit.
"If it's so earth-shaking, why didn't the grand jury indict? The grand jury had the benefit of all this stuff," Joe Painter said, referring to the Montgomery County grand jury's refusal to indict Crawford and Morrison on rape charges in April.
Brown was added as a defendant to the lawsuit late, after Tech released transcripts from two campus judicial hearings in which he testified. The transcripts were provided to the parties in the case, but are subject to a judge's order that prevents them from being made public.
According to Brzonkala's lawsuit, Brown testified that he was in the suite the three football players shared the night that Brzonkala visited Morrison and Crawford.
Brown testified that Crawford left Morrison and Brzonkala in one room and went into his room for about 15 minutes. Brown says he and Crawford then returned to the other room while Brzonkala was still there with Morrison, the lawsuit says.
Brzonkala says Morrison and Crawford took turns raping her and has maintained that she never saw Brown there. Morrison says what happened between him and Brzonkala was consensual. Crawford denies having sex with her.
Brzonkala did not file criminal charges against the football players, but proceeded through the campus judicial system. A judicial board took no action against Crawford and found Morrison guilty of sexual assault . A second hearing panel found Morrison guilty of the lesser charge of using abusive language toward Brzonkala. Both panels recommended he be suspended for two semesters, but the provost overruled them and put him on probation instead.
Wagner has said she added Brown as a defendant after reading the transcript of his testimony. But after meeting with state police investigators 10 days ago, Wagner said, she learned of a witness who said Brown could not have been in the dorm suite the night of the incident.
She would not elaborate on who the witness is or where he said he saw Brown that night.
Wagner would not characterize Brown's testimony as a lie or say for certain that Brown was not present during the incident. But she said she has "serious doubts he was there. A witness says he couldn't have been there, and my client says she didn't see anyone there."
State police in Salem conducted a criminal investigation of Brzonkala's complaint this spring at the request of Attorney General Jim Gilmore after publicity about her lawsuit. A grand jury in Montgomery County declined to indict the players, and state police will not release details of their investigation.
Police did meet with attorneys for Morrison, Crawford and Brzonkala, however, to inform them of "private information" collected about their individual client, said Assistant Special Agent in Charge Robert Perry.
Even though she no longer has a claim against Brown under the Violence Against Women Act, Wagner said, she plans to file suit against him in state court based on his possible interference with the judicial board's fact-finding.
"Cornell Brown will be an old man before he hears the end of this," she said. "Mr. Brown is not off the hook by a long shot."
`Beau' Biden, the senator's son, snares a job at Justice
USA TODAY (Arlington, VA)
June 6, 1996
https://infoweb.newsbank.com/
There were as many as 4,000 applicants last year for an entry-level program for lawyers at the Justice Department, but only 163 were hired. One was Joseph R. "Beau" Biden III.
For most young lawyers, snaring a job at the Justice Department is a major coup. But when your father is Joseph R. Biden Jr., the U.S. Senator from Delaware, the question inevitably comes up: Just how much of a coup was it?
The Bidens, both the elder -- a four-term Democratic Senator, former chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee and now the ranking minority member on that committee -- and the younger say there is nothing amiss.
Beau landed an entry-level legal job at the Justice Department, the agency his father's committee oversees, on his own merits, they say.
"The idea that my son has a job as a counsel down there -- a young lawyer -- I don't see any conflict," Sen. Biden said. "Why would there be? The Justice Department is a gigantic department and he's qualified. At least they assumed he was."
Beau, 27, works at the Justice Department's Office of Policy Development, which is charged with implementing the Justice Department-related laws Congress passes. More specifically, the young Biden is responsible for missing children's issues, the Brady Bill, and the Violence Against Women Act -- issues Sen. Biden has spearheaded.
"The fact that I am his son doesn't mean I can't be involved with helping to enforce or defend that law," Beau Biden said. "I would be closed out of doing just about anything if you follow that logic."
The story of the Bidens is just one example of many of the conflicts that arise when your relative is a high-profile lawmaker.
On the one hand, no one wants to be accused of nepotism or a conflict of interest; on the other, why should one's career be hampered because of who they are related to?
"The fact that Senator Biden ... has oversight responsibility for the very office that employs his son certainly raises at least an appearance of a conflict of interest," said Mark Levin with the conservative Landmark Legal Foundation, which promotes government ethics.
"Let's not pretend that in the universe of, gosh-knows how many attorneys, that this one just happened to pop up on merit alone. That is not to say his son is not qualified, but he is Joseph Biden III."
"Does it violate any law? No. But, in my mind, at a minimum, it creates appearance of a conflict."
Bill Hogan, with the Washington, D.C.-based Center for Public Integrity, said there is more involved when you are an elected official than just answering the legality question.
"Having answered that, we need to go beyond that and say what does this look like from the outside?" he asked. "If you took a job that you think might be influenced by what your father did, I'd think you'd want to be sensitive to it. Often like that, I think it's sensible for these kinds of situations to be avoided."
But Beau is not the only relative the senator has close by.
Over at the Government Printing Office, Francis W. "Frank" Biden is director of congressional, legislative and public affairs, making him the agency's chief lobbyist. Frank is the senator's younger brother.
"Don't nail me on this," Frank said when contacted in Wilmington. He was appointed by President Clinton to the $78,000-a-year post in 1993.
He said his job is completely outside the purview of his brother's responsibilities in the Senate.
Frank, 42, whose background is in sales, said he got the job after being alerted to it by a friend, Anthony Zagami, who is general counsel at the Government Printing Office, and not through any assistance from his brother.
In fact, he said throughout his career he has "assiduously avoided" seeking out jobs at major corporations in Delaware because he was related to an influential, elected official. "People have a natural tendency to be kind to someone who is related to someone they admire," Frank said.
Which gets back to Beau Biden.
Beau Biden, his father and his immediate supervisor, Eleanor Acheson, insist the young lawyer applied for the $44,458-a-year job, was qualified and was hired -- without any intervention from his father.
Acheson, assistant secretary for the Office of Policy Development, defends hiring Beau, whom she said she chose after interviewing eight or nine applicants.
She said she never had any contact with Sen. Biden about the job and said she does not recall getting recommendations for Beau from any other member of Congress. Beau backs that up, saying he recalls no recommendations written on his behalf.
"Biden came in and got the job on his own merits," Acheson said.
The entry-level counsel job requires:
-- A law degree;
-- Preferably someone who had held a clerkship or has other legal or policy experience;
But there are other intangibles that Acheson said she looks for, such as a self-starter or someone with ample experience analyzing legal issues.
Beau got his law degree in 1994 from Syracuse University -- as did his father in 1968. Beau earned a 2.69 grade point average, not enough to garner him a top 25 percent spot in his class. Before law school, he received an undergraduate degree from the University of Pennsylvania in European history.
Prior to joining the Justice Department, he clerked for one year in Concord, N.H., for U.S. District Judge Steven McAuliffe -- the husband of the teacher, Christa McAuliffe, who perished in the Challenger explosion in 1986.
"He's a terrific lawyer," Judge McAuliffe said. "He was a great clerk. He did a great job. I think he is very hard working, very dedicated. He puts in long hours -- excellent judgment, a terrific young man."
Acheson, herself the granddaughter of Dean Acheson, President Truman's Secretary of State, is sensitive to questions about nepotism.
"I'm well aware of how difficult it is and how careful you have to be," she said. "This is a young man who has got a lot of ability and a lot of talent. That is the beginning and the end of it.
"And the suggestion, implicit in this whole inquiry that he should not be permitted to have a job at the United States Department of Justice because his father is a United States Senator ... is a crazy, crazy notion."
But, even so, how do you say no to Sen. Joseph R. Biden's son?
"They said no when I applied initially, when I applied to the criminal division," Beau Biden says. "I am saying that people can say `No' to me."
Biden, the senator, also disagrees with the `how-could-they-say-no' tack.
"What would have happened if they didn't make Bill Roth's wife a judge?" he asked.
Eleven years ago questions surfaced when Jane Richards Roth, a Wilmington lawyer, was appointed, first by President Reagan as a U.S. District judge, then by President Bush, to the Third Circuit.
At the time, Roth, who as senior Delaware Republican in a Republican administration, would have been responsible for nominating candidates to fill federal judgeships, said he did not recommend his wife, but had informed the White House of her interest in being a judge.
"I said that if they wanted a woman, I knew a good one," Roth told The New York Times.
The Biden saga may not be over yet, though.
Biden's other son, Robert Hunter, 26, graduated from Yale Law School just this spring.
He's studying for the bar exam now in Connecticut, but before long he, too, will be out searching for work.
His brother has a word of advice for him.
"I would tell my brother to do what he wants to do and to be honorable doing it," he said, hesitating, before turning the question around. "Are you trying to say, we both should have been doctors?"
BIG GUNS SQUARE OFF IN LAWSUIT
D.C. FIRM, JUSTICE DEPT. HOLD FORTH ON BRZONKALA
Roanoke Times, The (VA)
June 11, 1996
https://infoweb.newsbank.com/
Congress passed the Violence Against Women Act in an attempt to appease feminists after Lorena Bobbitt's attack on her husband, throwing "everything into the Act but free meat cleavers."
That's the tongue-in-cheek position on the law taken by the Center for Individual Rights, a Washington, D.C., law firm representing a Virginia Tech football player who has been accused of rape by former Tech student Christy Brzonkala.
Brzonkala is citing the Violence Against Women Act in her federal lawsuit against Tony Morrison and his teammate James Crawford. She says the two raped her in their dorm room in September 1994.
The Washington law firm and local attorneys for the football players urged a federal judge Monday to find that Brzonkala has no rightful claim against their clients. Failing that, they asked him to declare the Violence Against Women Act unconstitutional, which would leave Brzonkala with no federal case against the two players.
Chief U.S. District Judge Jackson Kiser listened to arguments for an hour and peppered both sides with questions, but he made no ruling.
The center has successfully taken on other high-profile cases, including that of a University of Virginia student who won a Supreme Court ruling that the school must fund his Christian magazine the same as it does other campus activities. It also recently fought the University of Texas law school's affirmative action policy on behalf of white applicants and won.
The firm's motto is "Better living through lawsuits."
As one of the first civil cases brought under the untested law, Brzonkala's suit has attracted intense interest. An attorney from the U.S. Justice Department flew to Roanoke on Monday to defend the law, as did a lawyer from the National Organization for Women's Legal Defense and Education Fund.
The law provides the first civil rights remedy for victims of gender-motivated crime, allowing victims to sue their attackers for damages, whether or not criminal charges were filed. They must prove they were attacked because of their gender and that their attackers acted at least in part out of hostility toward their gender.
The Center for Individual Rights charges in its most recent quarterly report that Brzonkala is being used by her attorney and "a gaggle of feminist groups ... on a crusade against misogynists, especially college athletes." But its attorney offered a strictly constitutional argument Monday before Kiser.
While fighting crime is generally a matter left to the states, supporters of the law argue that Congress had the authority to pass the Violence Against Women Act under its power to regulate interstate commerce. They say the country's courts have failed to protect victims of rape and domestic abuse. As a result, women are afraid to take certain jobs, or lose their jobs as a result of trauma from crime, and that affects interstate commerce, supporters say.
But Michael Rosman, an attorney with the Center for Individual Rights, told Kiser that the connection between gender-motivated crime and interstate commerce is "even more tenuous" than that of a law struck down by the Supreme Court last year. The court ruled in 1995 that Congress had gone too far in passing laws affecting local issues under the umbrella of interstate commerce.
Using the rationale of the Violence Against Women Act, Rosman said, Congress could pass national laws concerning divorce or pickpocketing or some other issue now considered a state concern.
By that logic, he said, "there is nothing Congress cannot do."
But John Tyler, a Justice Department attorney, said Congress had ample evidence that gender-motivated crime affects the economy and commerce. He listed some: The No.1 reason freshman women drop out of college is because they were raped; 20 percent of all women will be raped in their lifetimes; half of rape victims lose their jobs or are fired after being assaulted.
Women who are victimized have been denied equal protection under the law by state courts and are "belittled," Tyler said.
In the second part of Monday's hearing, Kiser dismissed All-American football player Cornell Brown from the suit. Brzonkala's attorney, Eileen Wagner, asked for the dismissal after talking to a new witness who Wagner said places Brown somewhere else the night of incident.
Brown, a suitemate of Morrison's and Crawford's, testified in two campus judicial hearings that he saw Brzonkala in their room the night she says she was raped. Wagner has suggested that Brown may not have been there and was only providing an alibi for Crawford. Brown's attorney had threatened to file a motion for sanctions against Wagner if she didn't dismiss him, saying the claims against him were "unfounded and frivolous."
Wagner is appealing Kiser's decision last month to dismiss Virginia Tech as a defendant in the case. She argues that the university gave Morrison preferential treatment after he was found guilty of using abusive language by two campus hearing panels, violating federal discrimination laws. He was suspended for two semesters both times, but the provost allowed him to stay in school on probation. The judicial panels took no action against Crawford.
A grand jury declined to indict the football players on criminal charges after a state police investigation this spring.
JUDGE UPHOLDS USE OF U.S. VIOLENCE-AGAINST-WOMEN ACT IN WIFE'S LAWSUIT
Miami Herald, The (FL)
June 20, 1996
https://infoweb.newsbank.com/
A federal judge on Wednesday upheld the constitutionality of the Violence Against Women Act in what the Justice Department said was the first use of the 1994 law by a woman suing her husband.
The woman, named in the lawsuit as Jane Doe, accused her multimillionaire husband of spousal abuse and gender-motivated violence before they separated.
U.S. District Judge Janet Bond Arterton allowed the woman to proceed with the lawsuit.
The lawsuit alleges that the husband treated the wife as a slave, even forcing her to care for his mistress' poodle and to pick out clothes for his extramarital affairs.
She claims that her husband had violent outbursts four to five times a week, and that she was thrown down stairs, hurled against a wall, kicked, shoved and pushed. She also says that at one time her husband kept a loaded shotgun in the house and repeatedly threatened her with it.
The lawsuit claims that the wife suffered permanent physical and mental injuries, including battered woman's syndrome. It seeks at least $50,000 in damages.
The man's attorney, Norman Pattis, called the allegations unfounded. He argued that the law was unconstitutional because it was not consistent with limits on federal police powers.
Arterton ruled that the act does not encroach on traditional areas of state law.
"It complements them by recognition of a societal interest in ensuring that persons have a civil right to be free from gender-based violence," she said.
The House of Representatives "found that both existing state and federal criminal laws were inadequate to protect against gender-motivated violence," the judge said.
Though not taking sides in the lawsuit, the Justice Department intervened in the case to defend the law.
In her lawsuit, the woman claims that she lived as a recluse from November 1993 to April 1995, "imprisoned in the house against her will, in continual and agonizing pain, with daily physical and mental torture."
The couple, who married in 1978 and lived in the wealthy suburb of Darien, are divorcing.
CLINTON FORCED TO DEFEND PROGRESS ON DOMESTIC ABUSE
Buffalo News, The (NY)
July 24, 1996
https://infoweb.newsbank.com/
President Clinton ended a two-day California swing Tuesday by seeking to bolster his already strong lead among women voters both statewide and nationally, but his campaign found itself forced to defend the slow start of an administration initiative on domestic violence.
Addressing a rally outside a counseling center here for battered women and their families, Clinton claimed credit for the Violence Against Women Act, which funnels money to local programs tackling the effects of domestic violence. The act also added federal penalties for some cases of domestic abuse.
But Republican Bob Dole's presidential campaign charged that the administration had spent only $473,000 of the $175 million authorized by the bill. And it complained that the U.S. Justice Department had so far sought prosecution of only 18 men accused of violence against women.
Clinton campaign officials said the slow disbursement was caused by last winter's two-time shutdown of the federal government, which occurred as GOP congressional leaders -- including then-Senate Majority Leader Dole -- haggled with the president over budget issues.
Joseph Lockhart, the Clinton campaign's deputy press secretary, said the law envisioned that federal prosecutions would be relatively infrequent. "This is mostly a local law enforcement issue," he said.
The cross fire hinted at Clinton's intense focus on maintaining his strong lead among women voters -- and Dole's need to undermine that margin in order to come within shouting distance of the president in the polls.
A poll for USA Today released this week showed Dole lagging nationally among men by a margin of 6 percentage points -- but trailing among women by 27 points. And a Los Angeles Times poll of California voters released last week showed Clinton with a 29 percent lead among women (he led by 27 points among all voters).
Clinton also announced that he has ordered federal officials to work on developing an alternative to the 911 emergency call system, which is increasingly clogged with non-emergency calls. He said he was directing the Department of Justice to work with the Federal Communications Commission to develop an easy-to-remember alternate number for non-emergency calls.
"We cannot do what we need to on the issue of domestic violence unless we do something about the stunning fact that the 911 emergency number system today is completely overburdened," Clinton said.
Speaking before a Democratic Party fund-raiser Tuesday night in San Francisco, Clinton said he would increase his fiscal 1997 request for state AIDS drug assistance programs by $65 million, for a total of $117 million. The funds must be approved by Congress.
He said the AIDS funding increase represents the type of function the federal government ought to perform, contrasting that against earlier calls in Congress that some federal agencies or functions ought to be eliminated.
FISCAL 1997 SPENDING BILL PASSES HOUSE
Ledger-Enquirer (Columbus, GA)
July 25, 1996
https://infoweb.newsbank.com/
The House voted to boost money to fight crime and illegal drugs while freezing or cutting other programs in a fiscal 1997 spending bill for the departments of Commerce, Justice and State approved Wednesday.
The $29.5 billion spending bill, passed 246-179, is up $1.7 billion from 1996 spending levels. Nearly all of that is accounted for by a $1.6 billion increase for crime initiatives, to $16.3 billion.
The Senate has not yet considered the bill.
The administration, unhappy with cuts in Commerce Department programs and funding for peacekeeping and international organizations, has threatened a presidential veto, although the bill is less confrontational than last year when it was vetoed in its original form.
The legislation funds President Clinton's community policy program, which Republicans tried to kill last year, at $1.4 billion, $500 million under what the administration wanted, and provides $3.5 billion, down $120 million, for the Commerce Department, another GOP target for extinction.
On Tuesday, 56 Republicans joined Democrats in approving a $109 million increase in spending for the Legal Services Corporation, the federal agency that provides legal aid to the poor. The additional money gives the corporation a budget of $250 million, near the 1996 level, and allows it to continue services that conservatives say have been used to promote liberal causes.
Partly in reaction to that vote, 68 Republicans voted against final passage of the bill.
The bill also:
Provides $2.8 billion for enforcement of immigration laws, allowing for the hiring of 1,100 new border patrol agents and including $500 million to reimburse states for the incarceration of illegal aliens.
Increases spending for the Violence Against Women Act by $22.5 million to $197.5 million.
Provides $7.1 billion for the war on drugs, including a $176 million increase, 21 percent, for the Drug Enforcement Agency.
Cuts funding in half for the Advanced Technology Program, which helps industry develop new technology, to $110.5 million. Republicans want to terminate the program.
RAPE CASE GROWS STATE LAWSUITS SET AS BACKUP
Roanoke Times, The (VA)
July 25, 1996
https://infoweb.newsbank.com/
Former Virginia Tech student Christy Brzonkala has filed two more lawsuits - these in state court - against the university and three football players she says were involved in raping her and covering up the crime.
The two suits were filed to meet the one-year statute of limitations, which was up July 21 - the anniversary of the second judicial board hearing Tech held in the case, said Brzonkala's attorney, Eileen Wagner.
Wagner said she has no plans at this point to serve notice on the defendants, which formally notifies them that they are being sued and requires them to respond. But the state suits can be served if the pending federal suit is dismissed.
Tech already has been dismissed from Brzonkala's federal suit, and she has appealed to the 4th U.S. Court of Appeals. One football player, Cornell Brown, was dismissed as a defendant by mutual agreement. Chief U.S. District Judge Jackson Kiser is considering a motion to dismiss the suit against the two players accused of rape.
The federal suit invokes the untested Violence Against Women Act of 1994, accusing the players of a gender-motivated hate crime.
The two new suits allege that the university and the players interfered with Brzonkala's access to fair hearings on her claims of sexual assault.
Brown, along with his suite-mates Tony Morrison and James Crawford, coordinated false testimony at two judicial board hearings, according to the suit filed against them in Montgomery County. Morrison and Crawford are accused of raping Brzonkala, a fellow freshman, in September 1994, while Brown is alleged to have provided a false alibi.
Brzonkala did not seek criminal charges, but made a complaint through Tech's internal judicial system in the spring of 1995. No action was taken against Crawford, but Morrison was found guilty of sexual assault the first time. He was granted a second hearing last summer and was found guilty of the lesser offense of using abusive language.
Both times, Morrison was suspended for two semesters, a punishment upheld by the school's appeals officer after the first hearing. But after the second hearing, Tech's provost overturned his punishment, saying it was too harsh for the offense.
The suit against Tech, which was filed in Richmond, where Wagner practices, accuses the school of breach of contract.
A university handbook is a legal contract between the school and its students under certain circumstances, Wagner said. In this case, she said, Tech breached that contract by violating the handbook's assurance that the decision of the appeals officer will be final.
"We don't believe that a student life policy is an implied contract, and that's what we'll argue," Tech spokesman Larry Hincker said when told of the suit Wednesday.
The three players are accused of tortious interference with a contract, fraud, conspiracy to commit fraud and intentional infliction of emotional distress. By allegedly lying during the hearings about events the night of the incident, the players caused Tech to breach its duty "to give plaintiff a fair opportunity to redress her injuries," the suit says.
Crawford's attorney, Joe Painter, called the lawsuit's pleadings "a very unusual interpretation of Anglo-American law."
JUDGE DISMISSES VA. TECH LAWSUIT
Charleston Daily Mail (WV)
July 29, 1996
https://infoweb.newsbank.com/
ROANOKE, Va. - A judge has ruled that Congress exceeded its constitutional authority when it passed the federal law a woman used to sue two Virginia Tech football players on rape charges.
Christy Brzonkala, the first woman to sue in federal court under the Violence Against Women Act, claims players Antonio Morrison and James Crawford raped her in their dormitory suite in 1994.
U.S. District Judge Jackson Kiser, in a ruling filed late Friday and released today, said the law is unconstitutional and dismissed the lawsuit.
"Without a doubt, violence against women is a pervasive and troublesome aspect of American life which needs thoughtful attention," Kiser wrote. "But Congress is not invested with the authority to cure all of the ills of mankind. Its authority to act is limited by the Constitution, and the constitutional limits must be respected if our federal system is to survive."
The Violence Against Women Act was patterned after federal remedies against racially motivated violence and discrimination.
VA. JUDGE MIGHT BE OVERRULED
KISER HAD RULED AGAINST PART OF VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN ACT
Richmond Times-Dispatch (VA)
July 31, 1996
https://infoweb.newsbank.com/
Lawmakers from both parties said yesterday that they expect an appeals court to overturn a federal judge's decision -- in a Virginia case -- declaring part of the Violence Against Women Act unconstitutional.
"This (judge) is the same guy who ruled (Virginia Military Institute) could keep women out," said Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr., D-Del., referring to U.S. District Judge Jackson L. Kiser, who ruled in favor of VMI's all-male admission policy in a 1991 trial.
In a ruling made public Monday, Kiser said that Congress had pushed beyond constitutional bounds with a provision in the Violence Against Women Act that allows rape victims to sue their attackers for violating their civil rights.
Bonnie Campbell, director of the Justice Department's Office on Violence Against Women, said the department may step in and appeal the ruling.
In the original rape case, Christy Brzonkala, a former Virginia Tech student, accused two of the school's football players of raping her in 1994. Neither was convicted. Brzonkala then filed the civil rights lawsuit last year.
The Violence Against Women Act, overwhelmingly passed by Congress in 1994, imposes tougher punishment against assailants and provides resources to help victims and help prevent future attacks. It also included the language allowing for civil rights litigation.
"This was a protection just like the (civil rights) protection for race," said Rep. Constance Morella, R-Md., referring to federal laws that allow civil lawsuits in race-based crimes.
Patricia Ireland, president of the National Organization for Women, said women should be able to sue their attackers "in the same way that Rodney King had a right to bring a civil rights suit" against the Los Angeles Police Department after his beating.
Supporters of the act also pointed out that a federal judge in Connecticut ruled just last month that the Violence Against Women Act is constitutional.
In his ruling, Kiser said violence against women was "pervasive" and merited "thoughtful attention." Congress, however, basically was trying to step in at the state level and solve all of society's ills, he wrote. Legislators were stretching interstate commerce laws beyond constitutionality by claiming that the federal government had an interest in stopping such violence because of its effect on commerce.
Kiser cited a ruling last year in which the Supreme Court struck down a federal gun-free school zone law that similarly used interstate commerce laws to justify federal intervention.
"Women literally are chased across state lines," said Campbell, noting that a variety of laws protecting women transcend state lines, such as court orders protecting women from their estranged husbands or boyfriends.
Members of Congress said the data and evidence in support of the act's constitutionality are convincing. Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, who co-authored the act with Biden, said he was not enthusiastic about the provision Kiser struck down. But he thinks it's constitutional and would like to "keep it alive."
ANTI-STALKING EFFORTS TAKE A BEATING IN THE LEGAL ARENA
Ledger-Enquirer (Columbus, GA)
August 18, 1996
https://infoweb.newsbank.com/
If you didn't know better, you might think the small gray pendant hanging from Jeanne Mahoney's neck was a good-luck charm.
``This is my peace of mind,'' said Mahoney, a 51-year-old mother of six, fingering it. ``I'm counting on it to save my life some day.''
The pendant links Mahoney to a home security company. If her ex-husband shows up at her home, she can use it to summon help at the push of a button.
The small electronic transmitter, provided by the Abused Women's Active Response Emergency program for battered women, is one piece in a patchwork quilt of assistance -- including shelters, protective orders and anti-stalking laws -- available to women who fear abuse from men in their lives.
But such resources offer only limited security to women facing the threat of domestic violence. And recent legal efforts to make them safer have encountered sharp setbacks.
Last month, an anti-stalking bill that would make it a felony to cross a state line to threaten or intimidate a battery victim got bogged down in the U.S. Senate despite broad bipartisan support.
The trouble came over a proposed amendment that would prevent people convicted of domestic violence from owning firearms. The amendment is stalled because some legislators were wary of angering the National Rifle Association, one of the most vocal lobbying groups on Capitol Hill.
And at the end of July a Virginia judge ruled unconstitutional a 1994 federal law defining rape as a violation of civil rights and allowing victims to sue their attackers.
The law, the Violence Against Women Act, argued in part that attacks on women affect their job performance, and therefore have an effect on interstate commerce. But the judge rejected that notion.
``It's clearly a setback for women who may have sought the law as their only means of redress,'' said Brenda Smith, senior counsel for the National Women's Law Center in Washington.
Kathy Rogers, executive director of the NOW Legal Defense and Education Fund in New York, said, ``That law reverses hundreds of years of cultural norms that say it's all right to beat your wife or rape your date. It proved that politicians took violence against women seriously.''
The Virginia decision ``will not be the last word,'' she said.
These legal challenges clearly complicate the outlook for those attempting to solve the problem of spousal abuse.
The anti-stalking legislation, introduced by Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas, included a proposal by Sen. Frank Lautenberg, D-N.J., that would bar anyone convicted of a crime involving domestic violence, including misdemeanors, from owning or possessing a gun.
Lautenberg argued that too many domestic violence cases are handled as misdemeanors, and as a result aren't subject to the federal law that prohibits most convicted felons from owning or possessing guns.
But the Lautenberg amendment misses the point, said Elizabeth Swasey, director of the National Rifle Association's CrimeStrike division.
``The issue that should be addressed surrounds the plea bargaining that occurs in domestic-violence cases,'' Swasey said. ``If we really care about the protection of women, we should start treating domestic violence like the serious crime it is, instead of backing into it with amendments like these.''
The bill is now being considered in the House of Representatives, but some insiders feel the gun ban will not wind up in the final version.
Rodgers of the NOW Legal Defense and Education Fund said that while the Virginia ruling on the Violence Against Women Act was a setback, she is confident that if the Supreme Court winds up assessing the law it will remain intact.
``How could they NOT interpret rape and battery as a violation of a woman's civil rights?'' she said. ``How can they reject an overwhelmingly bipartisan call to address this epidemic?''
Clinton: Hit spouse or child, lose handgun
San Diego Union-Tribune, The (CA)
August 27, 1996
https://infoweb.newsbank.com/
President Clinton, talking tough on crime as he toured Ohio by train, yesterday vowed to take handguns away from wife beaters and child abusers and make sure other such offenders never can buy one.
On a day scripted to spotlight crime prevention and responsibility, Clinton surrounded himself with uniformed officers and called for an expansion of the Brady Bill to deny handguns to anyone convicted of domestic violence.
"Those who threaten the safety of others do not deserve our trust," Clinton told a crowd gathered at a police training academy in Columbus. "And if you commit an act of violence against your spouse or your child, you shouldn't have a gun."
Making a bold play for an issue that has long belonged to Republicans, Clinton hopes to portray his as a law-and-order presidency, promoting a long list of initiatives that he said will make the streets safer for police officers and citizens.
He called for gun-free zones around schools, tougher sentences for drug dealers who carry weapons during the commission of crimes, and a ban on the manufacture and sale of "cop killer" bullets.
Clinton also took on his critics in the gun lobby and others who have fought his ban on assault weapons and armor-piercing bullets.
"I've never seen a deer hunter with an Uzi," he said, "and I've never seen a deer in a Kevlar vest."
The crime theme, particularly its focus on domestic violence and safe schools, also was intended to appeal to women, who as a whole have been far more receptive than men to Clinton's anti-crime proposals, particularly gun control.
"I've been duck hunting since I was a very young fellow, and it wouldn't have bothered me a lick to wait a few days to have my record checked," Clinton said, referring to the Brady Bill requirement for police background checks.
"But there are 60,000 felons, fugitives and stalkers who don't have handguns because of the Brady Bill, and we're better off because of it."
The Dole campaign returned fire, accusing the Clinton administration of "neglecting" domestic violence. According to Dole, the Justice Department has prosecuted only 18 people under the Violence Against Women Act in the two years it has been in effect.
In addition, Dole aides criticized Clinton for releasing less than half of the $175 million appropriated by Congress for domestic violence programs -- a delay Clinton blames on last winter's shutdowns of the federal government.
Dole long has endorsed an "instant" computer criminal check instead of the Brady Bill, which he argues is less effective.
He does not, however, support banning sales to people convicted of misdemeanors, according to spokeswoman Christina Martin.
Since taking office, Clinton has endorsed or signed several crime-fighting measures that expanded the death penalty, banned some assault weapons and put more cops on the beat. Today, he is scheduled to receive the endorsement of the National Association of Police Organizations.
Yesterday was Clinton's second day of a four-day, 500-mile tour on the "21st Century Express," a campaign train en route to the Democratic convention in Chicago.
He is unveiling or spotlighting several domestic initiatives along the way, including a billion-dollar literacy program he is expected to announce today.
His slow-moving, banner-bedecked train stopped for rallies in Columbus, Arlington, Bowling Green, Lime City and Toledo on a 16-hour day tour traversing Ohio, a key battleground state with 21 electoral votes, which he won by a whisker in 1992.
Much of this state still is Republican territory, and several stops were sprinkled with people holding "Dole-Kemp" signs and occasional hecklers.
But colorfully orchestrated rallies clearly charged up the president, who waved gleefully from the back of his luxury parlor car as a helicopter hovered in the sky, testing the technology that sent images from the train to delegates at the convention.
As he snacked, visited with VIP guests, tooted the train whistle and viewed the hundreds of people lining the tracks, many waving handmade signs cheering him on, Clinton called the train trip "my idea of heaven."
Clinton: Ban gun sales to those convicted of domestic violence
USA TODAY (Arlington, VA)
August 27, 1996
https://infoweb.newsbank.com/
COLUMBUS, Ohio -- President Clinton, in the second day of his four-day railroad tour, focused on his record on crime -- and on gun control in particular.
As aides had promised, the president had the first of a series of convention week proposals ready: passing legislation to extend the Brady Law to cover anyone convicted of domestic violence.
``Those who threaten the safety of others do not deserve our trust,'' Clinton said. The Brady Law, according to the White House, has kept 60,000 felons from purchasing handguns since its 1993 passage.
The importance of Clinton's proposal is that ``four out of five crimes are misdemeanors not felonies, so the vast majority of domestic violence convictions don't get covered,'' said White House domestic policy adviser Bruce Reed.
Such legislation passed the Senate but has been blocked in the House ``under strict orders from the gun lobby,'' claims a release from the Clinton/Gore campaign.
Dole's campaign said his proposal for instant background checks on all gun purchases would be more effective in keeping guns from domestic abusers. He has also proposed preventing anyone under a court order for stalking or harassing a spouse from buying handguns, rifles or shotguns.
Dole spokeswoman Christina Martin noted the Clinton administration has prosecuted only 18 individuals under the 2-year-old Violence Against Women Act and has released only $473,000 of the $175 million appropriated for it.
Dole voted against the Brady Law. He had promised to lead an effort to repeal the ban on some assault weapons, but in July reversed that position.
Clinton also highlighted other anti-crime proposals that he has submitted to Congress without results, such as a bill to ban so-called ``cop-killer'' bullets.
``I have never seen a deer in a Kevlar (bullet-proof) vest,'' Clinton said, using a line he often employs to counter the argument that hunters and amateur gun enthusiasts would be affected by such a law.
Other Clinton proposals:
þ Fixing a Supreme Court decision that invalidated a 1990 law making it illegal to possess a gun within 1,000 feet of a school.
þ Negating another high court decision with a bill that would let prosecutors punish possession of a firearm when committing a drug felony, rather than using gun in such an act.
Monday's emphasis on crime -- Clinton will focus on education today and the environment Wednesday -- was timed to coincide with Sarah Brady's address to the convention in Chicago. In her speech, she said the Brady Law has stopped more than 100,000 convicted felons and other prohibited gun purchasers from buying guns.
FORMER VA. TECH STUDENT APPEALS RULING ON RAPE
Richmond Times-Dispatch (VA)
September 14, 1996
https://infoweb.newsbank.com/
A former Virginia Tech student has appealed a judge's ruling that rape victims cannot sue their attackers for damages in federal court.
U.S. District Judge Jackson Kiser ruled in July that Congress exceeded its constitutional authority by passing the 1994 Violence Against Women Act.
Christy Brzonkala, the first woman to sue in federal court under the act, contends Virginia Tech players Antonio Morrison and James Crawford raped her in their dorm suite in 1994.
The appeal to the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals was filed Thursday. Brzonkala's attorney, Eileen Wagner, said yesterday that she will argue that Congress had the authority to pass the act because it is similar to civil rights legislation that allows victims of hate crimes to sue for damages.
Brzonkala claimed the attack, which occurred within a few weeks of the act's passage, was motivated by the players' hatred of women and was not a random act of violence.
TECH LANDS ON HOT SEAT OVER CRIME REPORTING
PROCESS STUDIED
Roanoke Times, The (VA)
September 14, 1996
https://infoweb.newsbank.com/
The U.S. Department of Education will look into allegations that Virginia Tech has intentionally underreported campus crime statistics.
Tech spokesman Larry Hincker called the allegations "false and intentionally misleading."
Richmond lawyer Eileen Wagner made the allegations in a complaint filed in August.
Wagner represents former Tech student Christy Brzonkala, who says two football players raped her in their dorm room in September 1994.
The players were never charged criminally, and a federal judge recently dismissed a suit Brzonkala filed against the players under the Violence Against Women Act and against the university for allegedly discriminating against her because of her gender. The ruling is under appeal.
In July, Brzonkala filed suit in state court, claiming the university and the two players interfered with her access to fair hearings.
The department announced Wednesday its decision to pursue Wagner's allegations further. Also on Wednesday, the House of Representatives passed a resolution directing the department to "play a more active role in monitoring and enforcing" the parts of the Higher Education Act of 1965 that pertain to campus crime.
Brzonkala believes Tech "customarily declines to report any sexual assault for which no police report is prepared," according to the complaint.
She points to Tech's crime report for 1994, which lists two rapes. Both rapes were reported to someone other than a police officer. However, Brzonkala's rape report is not listed. She told the Women's Center in the spring of 1995 that she had been raped.
Hincker said he's not sure where the two 1994 reports came from. He was reached at home Friday night and did not have access to those records.
A federal law passed in 1990 requires colleges and universities to report crimes committed on campus.
Hincker said the Education Department never fully clarified the law until 1994, and again in 1995, when the department called for schools to include crimes reported to departments other than the campus police.
Since then, Tech has complied, Hincker said. Statistics are compiled from campus police reports and other departments, such as the university's judicial system, the women's center and the student counseling center.
Universities once followed the same guidelines used for the FBI's annual Uniform Crime Report and only counted those crimes reported to police, Hincker said.
The university still uses its discretion in recording incidents reported to other departments.
"Not every single report is going to be included," Hincker said. "Some are found to have no basis.
"Police need to have evidence that the crime actually took place."
During the 1995-96 academic year, Tech's crime statistics include two rapes reported to police and 12 reported to other departments.
In addition to the crime statistic allegations, Brzonkala charges that Tech deprived her of rights set forth in the Sexual Assault Victim's Bill of Rights, which Congress passed in 1992.
She says the school violated the law's guarantee of her freedom to choose whether to live near or attend classes with the accused and her right to know about her attackers' punishment.
Hincker called those allegations specious and said they were repudiated when the federal judge ruled in the university's favor.
"The filing of this complaint seems to be another in a long line of publicity stunts by counsel to gain whatever bargaining leverage might be available to force the university into a settlement," Hincker said.
STOP ARRESTS, WOMEN'S CENTER DIRECTOR SAYS
POLICE STATISTICS SHOW NO PATTERN
Times-Picayune, The (New Orleans, LA)
October 11, 1996
https://infoweb.newsbank.com/
The director of an eastern St. Tammany Parish center for battered women worries that Slidell police arrest too many women when responding to domestic disturbances. .
"A lot of women coming to this center tell me they are being arrested by Slidell police during the course of response to domestic disturbance complaints," said Joan Scanlan, executive director of Safe Harbor. Safe Harbor provides shelter for battered women and their children.
Police Chief Ben Morris, stung by a Sept. 8 letter to the editor by Ellen Blanker of Slidell accusing his office of a domestic violence dual arrest policy, bristled at Scanlan's assertion that Blanker's charge might have substance.
"We do not have a dual arrest policy. We will arrest women during a domestic disturbance investigation if they do something that is against the law," Morris said.
Statistics for the past two fiscal years support Morris' assertion.
A review of police records shows that from July 1, 1994, to June 30, 1995, police made 119 domestic disturbance arrests, and 12 of them were from dual-arrest cases.
From July 1, 1995 to June 30, 1996, police made 130 domestic disturbance arrests, 12 from dual-arrest cases.
But Scanlan and Blanker said they believe police are arresting battered women in situations that are not classified as domestic disturbances.
"But the chilling effect of arresting women is still the same no matter what it is called," Blanker said.
Morris, who took office in July 1990, instituted a domestic disturbance policy in 1991. That policy requires police to make an arrest if they see physical evidence that violence has occurred. It also permits officers to make an arrest if they think an altercation might occur after they leave otherwise.
Blanker, a member of the St. Tammany Parish Domestic Violence Coordinating Council, and Scanlan believe Slidell police feel compelled to make an arrest in every domestic disturbance.
"For instance, we had a women in the center recently who said she was given a summons by a Slidell officer to appear in court after her husband filed a complaint alleging that she scratched him," Scanlan said.
"But what happened was that she had tried to intervene because she thought her husband was being physically abusive to their daughter. She said her husband turned on her, threw her down and threatened her, and if she scratched him, it was during her attempt to defend herself," Scanlan said.
Scanlan and Blanker both said Morris probably needs to make sure all of his officers are familiar with the 1994 Violence Against Women Act signed by President Clinton.
"That law discourages dual arrests and mandates that police conduct a criminal investigation to determine the primary aggressor," Scanlan said.
She said the 12 dual arrests for two fiscal years out of a total of 249 domestic disturbance arrests are "12 too many."
Incident reports for July 1, 1994, to June 30, 1995, show the dual arrests result from a variety of events, including women allegedly attacking men and women allegedly attacking police.
For the more recent fiscal year, one dual arrest came after a woman bit a man on the chest and he threatened to stab her with a knife, and in some of the other cases, both men and women admitted hitting each other or witnesses told police they saw couples beating each other.
Debbie Villio, vice president of the parish Domestic Violence Coordinating Council, said she is puzzled by the accusations of Blanker and Scanlan. "We often discuss the dual arrest policy but we have never had information that the numbers in Slidell are a problem," she said.
Wichita Falls man gets 16 years under '94 domestic violence act
Dallas Morning News, The (TX)
October 29, 1996
https://infoweb.newsbank.com/
A Wichita Falls man has become the first defendant in the 100-county Northern District of Texas to be convicted and sentenced for interstate domestic violence under the Violence Against Women Act of 1994.
A Dallas judge sentenced William Douglas Lankford III on Monday to a prison term of 16 years and three months for kidnapping and assaulting his estranged wife. He was convicted last summer.
Five years of his sentence became mandatory after a jury concluded that he used a handgun to kidnap and terrorize his wife.
U.S. District Judge Joe Kendall said an FBI investigation produced compelling evidence that Mr. Lankford intended to murder his former spouse and her boyfriend during a violent confrontation at her house 13 months ago.
"I believe unequivocally that on Sept. 26 {1995} you were going over there to kill them," the judge said.
Mr. Lankford, a 35-year-old martial arts instructor, has remained in custody since that incident, which was the third altercation in four months.
During testimony twice this year, the defendant denied that he kidnapped Joanie Lankford at gunpoint from a Wichita Falls parking lot in August 1995 and took her to Lawton, Okla., to force her to have sex.
Mr. Lankford's first trial ended without a verdict when jurors could not reach a unanimous decision.
In each trial, Assistant U.S. Attorney Chris Stokes obtained testimony that Mr. Lankford carried a handgun when he entered his estranged wife's home in May 1995.
She and her boyfriend then were struck in the face, the two prosecution witnesses testified. And, they testified, she was forced to have sex with Mr. Lankford.
Three months later, Ms. Lankford testified, her ex-husband abducted her, took her to Oklahoma and threatened to kill her if she didn't spend the night with him in a motel.
Last September, after Ms. Lankford filed charges against him, Mr. Lankford was arrested by Wichita Falls police at midnight as he attempted to drag her into her home. He was dressed in black and carried surgical gloves, a knife and duct tape.
Ms. Lankford had wounded him in the head with a small-caliber pistol, and he had struck her several times in the face.
The police had been called by Ms. Lankford's boyfriend, who later testified that Mr. Lankford had attacked him at the front door. The boyfriend said he then fled for help.
Mr. Lankford told Judge Kendall that he merely defended himself when he beat his ex-wife. He said she continued to pull the trigger of a misfiring handgun after she wounded him.
Judge Kendall dismissed that argument, repeating that Mr. Lankford intended to commit two murders 13 months ago.
"It's almost like you were going over there in the dead of night like a Navy SEAL or Ninja warrior or something," the judge said.
"I'm trying to proclaim my innocence," Mr. Lankford said, lamenting that his three children will be adults before he can seek an early release from prison. "She lied," he said of his ex-wife.
Ms. Lankford responded that her ex-husband lied when he said she consented to have sex with him. She said she did not resist because she was terrified that he would murder her.
"She testified that she feared you," Judge Kendall told Mr. Lankford. "There was some reason to believe that."
Mr. Lankford, who said that he will appeal his conviction, must serve at least 14 years before he can seek an early release from prison.
The interstate domestic violence charge has produced indictments against 18 other defendants across the nation, Mr. Stokes said.
"It's a statute that hasn't been used very much," Mr. Stokes said. "But when it is used, it can be extremely effective because of the heavy penalties."
Biden swaps leadership slot on Judiciary for one on Foreign Relations
USA TODAY (Arlington, VA)
December 2, 1996
https://infoweb.newsbank.com/
Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. is giving up a leadership slot on the Senate committee he used to craft the 1994 crime bill in order to devote more attention to international policy.
Biden, who has spent more than 20 years as chairman or ranking Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, will take over as lead Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Biden said Monday afternoon.
Senators are barred from serving as chairman or ranking member on more than one committee.
"I have always had a keen interest in foreign policy issues. I think that is where a lot of the action is going to be in the next four to six years in terms of U.S. interests ... in determining the security of the U.S.," Biden said.
Biden said he is interested in trade, international economics, arms control, nuclear proliferation, and U.S. relations with China and Russia -- "the two big unknowns."
"Those are areas that will directly affect our political, economic and military security," Biden said. "This (change) will give me more time to deal with that and yet keep all the things I am interested in on Judiciary."
He moved up a notch on Foreign Relations with the retirement of Sen. Claiborne Pell, D-R.I.
As Senate Judiciary Committee chairman, the Delaware Democrat fought for six years to get Congress to pass the crime bill that finally became law in 1994. He was chairman from 1987 until the Republicans took over the Senate in 1995.
"Being in the minority, the ability to initiate new legislation is diminished significantly, so on the areas that are my greatest interest in Judiciary, I have basically done the bulk of what I wanted to get done," he said. "Now, it's a matter of making sure I protect it."
Biden will continue to be a member of the Judiciary Committee, on which he has served since 1975. And, in an agreement with Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., who will take over as the ranking Democrat on the committee, Biden will continue to handle issues involving the 1994 crime bill, such as criminal justice, the Violence Against Women Act and drug policy.
Senate Democrats meet Tuesday to approve the change.
Last session, Biden also served as ranking Democrat on Judiciary's justice subcommittee, and the agreement with Leahy allows him to take the lead position on those issues again, even if Republicans decide not to keep the subcommittee when the 105th Congress convenes in January.
Biden said he won't miss being the Democratic leader on another Supreme Court nominee hearing, which he described as "incredibly time-consuming."
His new role means that he will go head-to-head with Sen. Jesse Helms, R-N.C., the Foreign Relations chairman who is one of the Senate's most conservative lawmakers.
But Biden said he is undaunted, remembering that he forged a working relationship when he had to face conservative Sen. Strom Thurmond, R-S.C., then chairman of Judiciary, when he became the lead Democrat on that committee back in 1981.
"I'm not as optimistic that that will happen with Jesse," Biden said, but added, "Jesse is going to know that we are going to have to end up having to work with one another."
