01/06/2021

Week 6 Discussion

Criminal Justice Role That Is Affected by Victim’s Rights

Lawyer (Defense or Prosecution)

How Victims’ Rights Affect A Lawyer and The Lawyers Professional Standards

Crime victims have rights just as every individual has rights and the rights of a crime victim

can affect a lawyer. Justifiable homicide, for instance, is a concept that is the right of a victim

that can affect a lawyer. Justifiable homicide is considered an excusable killing that does not

merit punishment when situations arise where the victim of a crime killed their assailant to

protect themselves (Karmen, 2020). A perfect example of justifiable homicide is the case of a

woman ‘Heather’ who was being held at gunpoint was moments away from being raped, she

struggled so hard against her assailant that he lost control over his gun that he dropped it and she

quickly picked it up blindly shooting her assailant, killing him (Gallman, 2015). Even if someone

involved in that case (indirect victim) wanted to press charges against the female, the lawyer

hired would have a difficult time convincing the judge and jury that the woman committed the

crime in anything other than self-defense. Depending on the crime the victim is affected by

depends on the rights that they have and in turn depends on how a lawyer can proceed with their

job.

How Does Continuing Evolution of The Victim Change the Professional Standards of a

Lawyer?

The continuing evolution of a victim changes the professional standards of lawyers because

as an individual goes through evolution the standards of how a lawyer has to go through its own

This study source was downloaded by 100000800531006 from CourseHero.com on 04-04-2022 10:37:55 GMT -05:00

https://www.coursehero.com/file/79137756/Week-6-Discussiondocx/

evolution. A lawyer cannot defend a victim or prosecute an offender with outdated laws and

policies.

How Technology/Media Has Changed the Role of the Victim

Technology/media has changed the role of the victim for the better but also the worse. To

further explain, with so many people in the world owning a smartphone and being obsessed with

recording every conflict or controversial thing they see it can either help a victim or turn a

situation sour for a victim. A case that made recent news was of a woman who accused a teenage

boy of stealing her phone and assaulted the boy trying to take his phone convinced that it was

hers. This entire altercation was not only caught on the boy’s fathers’ phone, but it was also

caught on the security cameras of the hotel that the altercation happened in. In this situation the

‘victim’ was the offender (she left her phone in an uber and it was returned to her) and the

‘offender’ was the victim, and all of this was known not because of a ‘he said, she said’ situation

like it would have been before the use of technology/media.

References

Gallman, S. (2015, July 28). Woman kills attacker in self-defense; may have unknowingly killed

serial killer. KRNV: News 4. https://mynews4.com/news/local/woman-kills-attacker-in-

self-defense-may-have-unknowingly-killed-serial-killer.

Karmen, A. (2020). Crime victims: An introduction to victimology (10th ed.). Boston, MA:

Cengage Learning.

This study source was downloaded by 100000800531006 from CourseHero.com on 04-04-2022 10:37:55 GMT -05:00

https://www.coursehero.com/file/79137756/Week-6-Discussiondocx/Powered by TCPDF (www.tcpdf.org)