Russell P. Butler, Esq. | 2016 National Crime Victims' Service Awards Tribute Video

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Russell Butler: Crime victims’ rights are civil rights. And those are rights that allow participation and input into the criminal justice process. 

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Russell Butler: When we first started, there was a great deal of education needed as to why victims did not then have rights and why they should have rights. I've been involved in the passage of rights dealing with how to inform victims, how to allow them to be present, how to allow them to be heard, how to protect their privacy-- a whole number of rights that just didn't exist 30 years ago. 

And with that, Mr. Chairman, we would like to urge the Committee to. . . 

We're in the public policy area to try to make sure those laws and policies are friendly to victims and we're helping individual victims navigate the criminal justice system. 

We have two other cases in the trial court now, where we filed a similar request. . . 

In 1994, we were able to get a constitutional amendment passed in Maryland for crime victims’ rights. It was a new concept and it was important fundamentally, because it raises victims’ rights to a constitutional dimension where a court should provide it with more respect. When you help an individual victim, it's like you have a very narrow little paintbrush, and you're doing good things and you're helping one person. But when you can pass a statute, it's like a big paintbrush where you're helping hundreds of thousands or millions of people on a much grander scale to make their rights a reality.