SACRAMENTO — A quarter-century after the slaying of Marsalee Nicholas, a college student from Malibu, voters will consider an initiative launched in her name that would give a stronger voice to crime victims and their families, and impose harsher treatment on convicted killers.
Proposition 9 would alter the state Constitution to require that crime victims be notified and consulted on developments in their cases. It would give them first claim on any restitution to be collected from offenders, and it would force prosecutors to take their opinions into account.
The measure, known as Marsy's Law and the Victims' Bill of Rights of 2008, also would make the state criminal justice system tougher in ways that critics, such as Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. Steve Cooley, say could violate prisoners' constitutional rights.
Ex-convicts accused of violating parole would lose their right to a lawyer provided by the state. Those serving possible life sentences could be denied parole for up to 15 years, triple the current maximum. And an unlimited number of victims would be able to testify at an inmate's parole hearing and say whatever they want -- uninterrupted -- without having to answer questions from an inmate or the inmate's lawyer.
"Victims just have no rights," said Marcella Leach, 79, Marsy's mother. "All anybody cares about is the rights of the criminals."
Marsy Nicholas was 21 when she was shot in the head and killed by an ex-boyfriend while home from UC Santa Barbara for Thanksgiving in November 1983.
The Proposition 9 campaign has received $4.8 million from her older brother, billionaire Henry T. Nicholas III -- who is currently under federal indictment on fraud, conspiracy and drug charges.
Marsy's mother, a proponent of the measure, co-founded Justice for Homicide Victims with her late husband, Robert, and with Ellen Dunne, whose daughter with author Dominick Dunne also was murdered.
Opponents say that Proposition 9's provisions on notification and restitution duplicate a crime victims' bill of rights that voters approved in 1982, and that they are designed to distract from the ballot measure's true -- and less advertised -- purpose: to keep prisoners locked up longer.
In a system that now grants parole to about 1% of eligible prisoners, inmates would be denied a chance for release for up to 15 years at a time without "clear and convincing evidence" for a shorter period between hearings.
