PROSECUTORIAL WITNESS TAMPERING

Prosecutorial Witness Tampering

Prosecutorial Witness Tampering

Across the nation, some victims of domes tic violence have come to believe that the criminal justice system-police, prosecutors, judges, and probation agents-simply cannot protect them. This feeling is intensified when victims continue to be threatened and harassed by the defendant after an arrest has been made. For this reason, many victims actively avoid cooperating with the criminal justice system. When victims withdraw from participating in a case, and the case lacks other supporting evidence, it is likely to be dismissed. (Ingersoll 2010)

Case dismissals create frustration among prosecutors, police officers, judges, and other criminal justice practitioners who may not have specialized training in the issues of domestic violence. The perception that defendants go free because victims recant or fail to appear in court can lead to misguided "victim blaming." To help address this misdirected frustration, prosecutors in Milwaukee County, Wisconsin, have developed a method to help expose the underlying reason why some victims fail to participate in criminal cases: the unlawful manipulation and intimidation of victims by defendants while the case is pending.

In 2001, a victim in a domestic violence case reported some unsettling experiences to a victim/witness specialist in the Milwaukee District Attorney's Office. The victim claimed that during the pretrial phase, while her abuser was in jail awaiting trial, his friends were following her and appearing at her workplace and home. (Ingersoll 2010)

"She expressed a great deal of fear," recalls Assistant District Attorney Paul Dedinsky, who leads the office's Domestic Violence Unit. "We approached the jail and requested a check of the offender's visitor logs to find out who visited him while in custody. The sheriff 's department told us, 'Sure, not only that, you can check his phone calls. We have a new system-it's digitized and you can actually listen to his phone calls'. Reviewing the recorded telephone conversations, the district attorney's office found that the defendant had solicited three of his friends to find the victim and kill her so that she couldn't testify against him at trial. The defendant was charged with solicitation to commit homicide, convicted, and sentenced to more than 20 years in prison.

Too often, the police and court responses to witness tampering are permeated with excuses, denial, and overt backlash against the victims. There are, however, some notable exceptions. Informed by a nuanced understanding of domestic violence, Judge Jeffrey Atlas patiently explains the compelling facts and reasoning that make this a decision to enshrine as precedent. (Bruce 2009)

This case alerted officials to the fact that significant numbers of domestic violence defendants abuse their telephone privileges while in custody. It also resulted in targeted efforts by the district attorney's office to review jailhouse phone recordings of domestic violence defendants and to prosecute those who had engaged in witness tampering.

"Especially on our felony cases," says Dedinsky, "it appeared that between 80 and 90 percent of the time when we were able to locate phone calls, we would find criminal behaviour that resulted in criminal ...