Voice in Sentencing and Trials
When Pain Speaks in Court
A grieving parent reads a victim impact statement describing how their child's murder has shattered their family, and the judge imposes the maximum sentence. Another victim, less articulate or too traumatized to speak coherently, submits a brief written statement, and the offender receives a lighter penalty for a similar crime. Someone harmed by drunk driving eloquently describes years of chronic pain and lost opportunities, while another victim of the same driver, killed instantly, has no voice except through family members the court may or may not allow to speak. Victim impact statements promise to center those harmed by crime in proceedings that historically ignored them, yet they raise uncomfortable questions about whether justice should vary based on victims' ability to express suffering or whether sentences should reflect offense severity regardless of who was harmed.
The Case for Meaningful Victim Voice
Advocates argue that victims deserve the opportunity to tell courts how crime has affected them. Impact statements provide information sentencing judges need: the actual harm caused, ongoing consequences, victims' views on appropriate outcomes. For many victims, being heard represents the first time the justice system has treated them as people rather than evidence. The therapeutic value of voice should not be dismissed. Speaking in court can be empowering, providing closure and acknowledgment that the harm was real and serious. From this view, sentences that fail to account for actual impact on actual people reduce justice to abstract assessment of offense categories divorced from human consequences. A justice system that considers criminal history, offender circumstances, and rehabilitation potential while ignoring victim impact produces incomplete justice. Victims should not control outcomes, but their voices deserve weight in sentencing decisions that directly concern harm done to them.
The Case for Consistent, Offense-Based Sentencing
Others worry that victim impact statements introduce inappropriate variability and emotion into sentencing. Similar offenses should receive similar sentences regardless of victim eloquence, grief, or desire for harsh punishment. Impact statements risk creating a two-tiered system where articulate, sympathetic victims secure harsher sentences while less expressive victims see lighter outcomes for the same crimes. Sentencing should be proportionate to offense severity and criminal history, not dependent on who was harmed. Moreover, impact statements can be inflammatory, prejudicial, and sometimes untruthful, yet courts rarely verify their accuracy or exclude emotional appeals that would not be admissible as evidence. From this perspective, while victims deserve compassion and information about proceedings, giving them formal voice in sentencing undermines consistency and equal justice. The harm in robbery is robbery, whether the victim presents as devastated or stoic, wealthy or poor, eloquent or inarticulate.
The Therapeutic Question
Research on whether impact statements benefit victims shows mixed results. Some report feeling empowered and heard. Others experience retraumatization from confronting offenders or disappointment when their statement seems to have no effect on sentencing. Some victims feel pressured to speak when they would prefer privacy. Others want to speak but are deemed ineligible by narrow legal definitions of victimhood. The assumption that voice in court is universally therapeutic may reflect what observers want for victims rather than what victims themselves need. Yet removing the option because it does not benefit everyone denies those who would find it meaningful the opportunity to participate.
The Question
If victim impact statements influence sentencing, have we created a system where justice depends partly on victims' communication skills and emotional presentation rather than offense severity? Can sentencing judges appropriately weigh actual harm to real people while maintaining consistency across similar cases? And when victims want voice in proceedings but speaking causes them further harm, or when they have no desire to participate but the system expects it, whose conception of justice should prevail?