A victim is not a party to a criminal case

4-2-2012 Connecticut:

From: a public defender's blog: Three’s a crowd

So it’s good to see a court even as conservative as Connecticut’s top court acknowledge and reaffirm this. Today, in State v. Gault, the CT Supreme Court held that a victim is not a party to a criminal case.

It is a ‘‘basic tenet of the criminal justice system that prosecutions are undertaken and punishments are sought by the state on behalf of the citizens of the state, and not on behalf of particular victims or complaining witnesses.’’ State v. Barnett, 980 S.W.2d 297, 308 (Mo. 1998), cert. denied, 525 U.S. 1161, 119 S. Ct. 1074, 143 L. Ed. 2d 77 (1999). ‘‘A criminal prosecution is a public matter and not a contest between the defendant and his victims, or their relatives.’’(Internal quotation marks omitted.) Id. It is axiomatic, therefore, that ‘‘[t]he parties to a criminal action are the [state], in whose sovereign name it is prosecuted, and the person accused’’; Dix v. Superior Court, 53 Cal. 3d 442, 451, 807 P.2d 1063, 279 Cal. Rptr. 834 (1991); and not the crime victim(s). State v. Harrison, 24 P.3d 936, 945 (Utah 2001).