I became a crime victim long before I ever became a lawyer.

Before I understood the structure of a courtroom or the language of legal procedure, I knew what it felt like to sit in a courtroom, trembling and confused. I knew what it meant to be retraumatized by silence, delays and indifference. I learned the hard way that surviving the crime was only the beginning and that the criminal justice system could compound the trauma, even as it claimed to serve victims.

Years later, I would enter law school with that experience etched into my bones. I didn’t become an attorney out of academic curiosity or ambition alone; I became one because I wanted to understand the system that had failed me and to help shape a better one. That dual perspective, as both a survivor and an attorney, has shaped every part of my legal career, even though I don’t practice in the criminal arena.

HISTORICAL CONTEXT OF VICTIMS’ RIGHTS

Historically, American criminal law positioned crime as a conflict between the state and the accused.[1] Victims were largely sidelined. Their injuries gave rise to public, not personal, claims, leaving them with no formal voice in court. That began to change during the 1970s and 1980s when survivors, feminist legal theorists and grassroots advocates pushed for legal recognition of victims’ interests.[2]

By the mid-1980s, every state had adopted some form of victims’ rights legislation. The 1982 President’s Task Force on Victims of Crime recommended sweeping reforms, and in 2004, Congress passed the Crime Victims’ Rights Act (CVRA), codified at 18 U.S.C. §3771. This act created enforceable rights in federal cases, including the rights to be notified, present and heard during major stages of the criminal process.

States followed suit, with more than 30 enacting constitutional amendments. Oklahoma joined this movement in 1996, adding Article II, §34 to its state constitution and enacting the Oklahoma Victim’s Rights Act.[3]

VICTIMS’ RIGHTS IN OKLAHOMA: A LEGAL FRAMEWORK

Oklahoma’s statutory and constitutional framework for victims’ rights is detailed and promising on paper.[4] Some of the rights crime victims are entitled to include:

• Being informed in writing of their rights
• Being notified and present at critical hearings
• Being heard regarding bail, plea deals, sentencing and parole
• Conferring with the prosecutor upon request
• Submitting a victim impact statement
• Asserting their rights in court through an attorney
• Seeking and receiving restitution

Additional protections apply to specific categories of victims. Survivors of sexual assault are entitled to forensic medical exams at no cost,[5] and those seeking protective orders may do so even when courts are closed.[6] Victims of human trafficking may not be fined or jailed for acts committed under coercion and are entitled to shelter and legal support.[7]

THE ENFORCEMENT GAP: WHEN RIGHTS ARE THEORETICAL

Despite these legal guarantees, victims in Oklahoma and across the U.S. often find that asserting their rights is easier said than done. Too frequently, they are:

• Not informed of plea deals until after they occur
• Discouraged or prevented from giving victim impact statements
• Excluded from sentencing hearings
• Ignored when requesting restitution or safety protections

These experiences are not just anecdotal. A 2023 analysis by the National Crime Victim Law Institute[8] identifies systemic failures in victims’ rights implementation, highlighting how courts and prosecutors often overlook statutory rights to be present, informed and heard.

In Oklahoma, the statutory language allows victims to assert their rights “in any trial or appellate court,”[9] but courts rarely, if ever, grant standing.[10] There is no state-level enforcement body. No victim ombudsman. And limited to no precedent holding state actors accountable for noncompliance.

BARRIERS TO ENFORCEMENT

The reasons victims’ rights go unenforced are both systemic and cultural:

• Lack of Awareness: Victims are frequently unaware of their rights, especially in the immediate aftermath of trauma.[11]
• No Legal Representation: Most victims are not assigned counsel and cannot afford to hire their own. Prosecutors represent the state, not the victim.[12]
• Judicial Resistance: Some judges minimize victims’ participatory rights, seeing them as advisory or inconvenient to court efficiency.[13]
• Prosecutorial Discretion: Prosecutors are not always inclined to consult with victims on plea deals, even when required by statute.[14]
• Cultural Inertia: The criminal justice system was never built with victims in mind. And institutional change has been slow.[15]

THE ETHICAL TENSION FOR PROSECUTORS

While prosecutors are often assumed to advocate for victims, their legal and ethical duties lie with the state. Their primary role is to represent the interests of the government, not any individual party. This structure ensures due process for the accused, but it also creates an inherent tension when victims believe the prosecutor is “their attorney,” only to discover that their needs and the state’s priorities do not always align.

This tension can manifest in several ways:

• Plea Negotiations: Prosecutors may enter into plea agreements without first consulting victims, even in serious felony cases. Although Oklahoma law gives victims the right to confer with the state’s attorney, this is often treated as discretionary.
• Trial Strategy Decisions: Victims may hope to influence charging decisions or sentencing recommendations, particularly when they involve safety concerns or repeat offenders. But prosecutors, bound by evidentiary and strategic constraints, often make decisions without victim input or in direct opposition to it. These choices can feel dismissive, especially when not explained.
• Resource Constraints: High caseloads and limited staffing can lead to efficiency-driven decisions that marginalize victim involvement, even when the prosecutor is well-meaning.

Ultimately, prosecutors walk a fine ethical line. They must balance victim engagement with their obligation to ensure a fair trial, maintain impartiality and conserve public resources. But without mechanisms for independent victim representation, this balance often tilts away from victims, leaving them without meaningful recourse when their concerns are sidelined.

To bridge this gap, many district attorneys’ offices employ victim-witness advocates, staff who are supposed to support victims by providing information, logistical help and emotional support. These advocates play a vital role. But they are not lawyers, and they are not independent. Their role is still situated within the prosecutorial office, meaning their advocacy is limited by the strategy, bandwidth and discretion of the prosecuting attorney.

This structure leaves victims without a truly independent voice in proceedings. When a victim’s wishes diverge from the state’s litigation goals, there is no neutral advocate empowered to assert those interests in court. Unlike defendants, who are constitutionally guaranteed legal representation, victims must rely on the goodwill of the prosecutor or seek private counsel at their own expense, which most cannot afford.

The absence of independent, state-funded legal representation means that victims’ rights remain contingent, not guaranteed. For a system that purports to honor victims’ dignity and participation, this is a profound and unresolved contradiction.

A SURVIVOR’S PERSPECTIVE FROM INSIDE THE SYSTEM

Before I studied case law or stepped foot into a courtroom as a legal professional, I was a victim of violent crime. Like many survivors, I entered the justice system not as a willing participant but as someone seeking safety, answers and some form of accountability. What I encountered instead was a system that, despite an evolving legal framework, often treated me as an afterthought.

I was never even told that I had any rights as a victim. And being a young 19-year-old college student completely unaware of how the court system worked, I had never heard of victims’ rights. I was not given notice of hearings that I had a right to be present for, nor was I consistently notified of plea negotiations despite statutory mandates requiring such notice. Most significantly, I was denied the right to prepare and read a victim impact statement at sentencing.

Later, when I learned about victims’ rights, I understood in retrospect what had gone wrong. It wasn’t because the laws weren’t there but because no one had enforced them. The system had failed to operationalize the rights afforded to me. There was no accountability, no remedy for noncompliance and no one assigned to advocate solely on my behalf.

It is a troubling paradox: Victims are increasingly granted participatory rights under the law, but those rights are often honored only when someone with legal standing insists on them. Without enforcement mechanisms, these rights amount to well-intentioned promises, not legal guarantees.

Even now, years later, I regularly hear from other victims who share similar experiences – who weren’t told they had any rights, whose victim impact statements were never read by the court, whose restitution claims were ignored or who were told by prosecutors that their input was unnecessary or unwelcome. These are not outliers; they are symptoms of a system that still struggles to treat victims as parties with agency.

As attorneys, we understand the importance of procedural due process for the accused. But due process for victims, though not identical, demands its own rigor. It includes timely notice, the opportunity to be heard and the right to participate meaningfully in proceedings that impact their safety, property and emotional well-being.

When victims’ rights are denied, there are few clear remedies. Oklahoma law theoretically allows victims to “assert [their rights] individually, through an attorney or lawful representative, or by request, through the attorney for the state.”[16] But courts have been reluctant to grant victims standing to enforce these rights independently, and there is little precedent supporting private causes of action for enforcement. Even the federal CVRA[17] provides limited avenues for recourse, with most appellate remedies being discretionary rather than mandatory.

What my experience taught me, both personally and professionally, is that legal rights without enforcement are symbolic at best and retraumatizing at worst. We would never tolerate this level of procedural disregard for a defendant. We should not tolerate it for a victim.

CIVIL REMEDIES: THE ILLUSION OF LEGAL RECOURSE

One of the greatest challenges in enforcing victims’ rights is the near-total absence of viable civil remedies. While Oklahoma’s constitution permits victims to assert their rights in trial or appellate court, there is no private cause of action expressly created for victims whose rights are ignored or violated.[18]

Unlike civil rights statutes – such as 42 U.S.C. §1983, which allows individuals to sue state actors for constitutional violations – there is no analogous mechanism in Oklahoma or federal law that allows victims to recover damages or obtain injunctive relief when their statutory (or state constitutional) rights are denied.

Victims who attempt to assert claims under §1983 face significant barriers:

• Courts have routinely held that victims’ rights laws do not create enforceable federal rights because those laws lack the “rights‑creating” language required by Gonzaga Univ. v. Doe,[19] a threshold that victims’ rights provisions fail to meet.
• Prosecutorial immunity often shields district attorneys and their staff from liability, even when they fail to honor victims’ rights.[20]
• Judicial immunity bars suits against judges who exclude or silence victims, even in contravention of statutory guarantees.[21]

The federal CVRA provides a mechanism to petition appellate courts for relief, but it offers no damages, no fee recovery and is often considered too burdensome or limited in scope to provide meaningful redress.[22]

In other states, victims can sometimes seek enforcement through mandamus or declaratory relief, but even these remedies are time-sensitive and procedurally complex. For most victims, the practical effect is this: When rights are denied, there is no accessible or effective pathway to hold the system accountable.

This lack of remedy undermines the very purpose of codifying victims’ rights – rights that exist only on paper and are functionally immune from challenge are not true rights. They are policy preferences. And until victims can access the courts to enforce them meaningfully, the promise of justice remains unfulfilled.

OPPORTUNITIES FOR REFORM

Reform must address both the legal and practical dimensions of enforcement. Key recommendations include:

• Appointment of Victims’ Rights Counsel: In serious felony cases, victims should be assigned counsel to assert and protect their rights.
• Statutory Remedies for Violations: Victims need clearly defined remedies when rights are denied, such as exclusion of a victim from a hearing or failure to confer on plea bargains.
• Standing and Participation: Courts must clarify and enforce victims’ standing to file motions and seek relief. States should adopt standing rules similar to the federal CVRA.
• Judicial Training: Mandatory continuing legal education (CLE) on victims’ rights and trauma-informed practice should be required.
• State-Level Oversight: Oklahoma should establish an independent victims’ rights ombudsman with authority to investigate complaints and enforce compliance.
• Technology for Notifications: Create centralized electronic systems that notify victims of all proceedings, case updates and outcomes.
• Funding for Community Advocacy: Increase Victims of Crime Act (VOCA) and state grant funds to support local nonprofits that serve and accompany victims.
• Comparative Policy Review: Other states, like Oregon, Arizona and Ohio, offer important lessons. Oregon provides state-funded legal representation to help victims assert their rights in criminal proceedings.[23] Victims in Oregon can seek enforcement of their rights through appointed legal advocates, and the Oregon Constitution allows for meaningful participation and recourse.[24]

Arizona’s constitution also includes enforceable victims’ rights, and the state has implemented a victim ombudsman and legislative oversight to track compliance.[25] Under Arizona Rev. Stat. §13‑4437, victims are empowered to enforce these rights by filing motions, special actions or even seeking damages from governmental entities. Crucially, the Arizona attorney general’s office maintains a victims’ rights compliance administrator who serves as an ombudsman, takes complaints, conducts investigations and promotes compliance across state and county agencies.[26] Ohio similarly supports enforcement through court-appointed legal assistance, and victims (or their representatives) can legally challenge violations of their rights through interlocutory appeals or writs and have courts appoint counsel when necessary.[27] These states demonstrate what is possible when legal rights are matched by infrastructure, funding and political will.

By contrast, Oklahoma’s constitutional provisions are more aspirational than actionable. Without a victims’ rights ombudsman or guaranteed access to legal counsel, enforcement is inconsistent and largely reliant on prosecutorial discretion. Establishing statutory mechanisms for enforcement, modeled after other states’ approaches, would dramatically strengthen victim protections in Oklahoma.

Victims’ rights shouldn’t vary so drastically depending on the state in which a crime occurs. True justice requires consistency and accountability.

CONCLUSION

Victims of crime deserve more than symbolic rights. They deserve the ability to participate meaningfully, be treated with dignity and have recourse when the system fails them.

As members of the bar, we are gatekeepers to justice, not just for defendants but for all who come before the court. It is time to take victims’ rights seriously, not just in theory but in action. We can look to states like Oregon, Arizona and Ohio for models of meaningful enforcement, and we must ask: What would it look like if Oklahoma followed suit?

To begin closing the gap between promise and practice, attorneys and policymakers can:

• Support legislation that creates a state victims’ rights ombudsman with investigatory authority;
• Advocate for the appointment of victims’ rights counsel in violent felony cases, especially when plea deals or sentencing decisions are at stake;
• Push for court rules or statutes that clarify victims’ standing to file motions and seek judicial remedies;
• Partner with local bar associations to offer CLE programming on trauma-informed practice and victims’ rights enforcement;
• Encourage public defenders and prosecutors alike to adopt written policies on victim engagement; and
• Vote for and support district attorneys who prioritize robust victim participation.

The question is no longer whether victims deserve these rights. The question is whether we, as legal professionals, are willing to stand behind them. Only then can we fulfill the promise of a truly balanced, equitable legal system.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Tulsa lawyer Rhiannon K. Thoreson is of counsel with Rosenstein, Fist & Ringold. Her practice focuses on education law and public entities. She is also a survivor of violent crime and writes on the intersection of law, lived experience and systemic reform.

 

 

 

 

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ENDNOTES

[1] Douglas E. Beloof, “The Third Wave of Crime Victims’ Rights: Standing, Remedy, and Enforcement,” 2005 BYU L. Rev. 255, 258.

[2] See Erin Daly and Jeremy Sarkin, Reconciliation in Divided Societies: Finding Common Ground, 142 (Univ. of Pa. Press 2007); and Mary P. Koss, “The Crime Victims' Rights Movement: Past, Present and Future,” 39 Pepperdine L. Rev. 165, 166-70 (2011) (describing how feminist legal advocates catalyzed systemic change in how victims were treated).

[3] 21 O.S. §142A-1 et seq.

[4] See Okla. Const. art. II, §34 and 21 O.S. §142A-1 et seq.

[5] 21 O.S. §142A-3.

[6] 22 O.S. §60.2.

[7] 21 O.S. §748.2.

[8] “Ten Common Victims’ Rights,” available at https://bit.ly/3LzJgAw.

[9] Okla. Const. art. II, §34(A)(10).

[10] Significantly, there are no published cases in Oklahoma addressing victims’ rights.

[11] U.S. Dept. of Justice, Office for Victims of Crime, Vision 21: Transforming Victim Services (2013), at 16-18.

[12] Beloof, 2005 BYU L. Rev. at 263-64.

[13] Mary Margaret Giannini, “Equal Rights for Equal Rites? Victim Allocution, Defendant Allocution, and the Crime Victims' Rights Act,” 26 Yale L. & Pol’y Rev. 431, 457-59 (2008).

[14] Deborah Tuerkheimer, “Judging Women,” 119 Mich. L. Rev. 1355, 1381-83 (2021).

[15] Koss, 39 Pepp. L. Rev. at 168-70.

[16] Okla. Const. art. II, §34(A)(10).

[17] 18 U.S.C. §3771.

[18] Okla. Const. art. II, §34(B).

[19]  536 U.S. 273 (2002).

[20] See Imbler v. Pachtman, 424 U.S. 409 (1976).

[21] See Stump v. Sparkman, 435 U.S. 349 (1978).

[22] See 18 U.S.C. §3771(d)(3).

[23] Oregon Revised Statutes §147.500 et seq.

[24] Oregon Const. art. I, §42.

[25] Ariz. Const. art. II, §2.1.

[26] See Arizona attorney general’s website, available at https://bit.ly/4aLFoGQ.

[27] Ohio Rev. Code §2930.01 et seq.