NCJ Number
228877
Journal
Violence Against Women Volume: 15 Issue: 10 Dated: October 2009 Pages: 1248-1258
Date Published
October 2009
Length
11 pages
Annotation
This legal note examines recent U.S. Supreme Court cases that address interventions to prevent violence against women, and it suggests how practitioners can tailor interventions to respond to these decisions.
Abstract
In United States v. Morrison (2000), the primary issue was whether Congress had the constitutional authority to enact the part of the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) that granted victims of gender-motivated violent crime the right to bring a civil lawsuit against the offender in Federal court. The Supreme Court was unwilling to consider the cumulative effect on commerce of the many individual acts of gender-motivated violence. It was also concerned that if Congress could regulate gender-motivated violence, there would be few limits on Federal power to regulate other criminal matters traditionally left to the States. In Castle Rock v. Gonzales (2005) the U.S. Supreme Court overruled the 10th Circuit's decision to allow the recipient of a restraining order (Gonzales) to proceed with a lawsuit that claimed the town of Castle Rock had violated her 14th amendment rights in failing to enforce the property interest she held in the execution of the restraining order against her former husband. The Supreme Court held, however, that Gonzales did not have a protected property right in the enforcement of the restraining order. In Davis v. Washington (2006) the Supreme Court considered whether information provided in a 911 call by a domestic violence victim and a domestic violence victim's statements in a police interview could be used as evidence even though they did not testify at trial. The Court ruled that victim information in the 911 call could be used as evidence, but not the information provided in the police interview. The implications of these decisions for interventions in domestic violence cases are considered. 29 references