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 A lawyer cannot defend a victim or prosecute an offender with outdated laws and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