Without explanation, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected a bid by Attorney General Mark Brnovich to keep lawyers from being able to challenge law.
Howard Fischer Capitol Media Services PHOENIX — Criminal defense attorneys in Arizona are now free to challenge a state law that prohibits them from directly contacting crime victims and their families.
And even if they ultimately win, none of that actually will force crime victims to speak with defense lawyers. All it would do is remove the additional hurdle of having to funnel their requests through prosecutors.But the defense attorneys say they see overturning the law as allowing them to meet their obligation to provide effective assistance to their clients.
Jared Keenan of the American Civil Liberties Union, who argued on behalf of the defense lawyers, said the measure, which has no parallel in the other 49 states, has legal issues. "There are many instances where prosecutors simply ignore the views of the victims when the views of those victims don't coincide with what the prosecutor wants, which is generally the harshest penalty they can get in every single case,'' he said. And Keenan said a harsh sentence — or a death penalty — may not be wishes of the victims or surviving families.
The appellate judges said that defense attorneys have an independent interest in voiding the law, separate from their representation of any one client. That's because they put themselves in professional jeopardy if they reach out to victims without running their requests through prosecutors.
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