Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, April 25, 1993 TAG: 9304230465
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: F-2 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Might have.
But this isn't an instance of an individual official's irresponsibility or callousness leading to tragedy. It is a case of institutional ignorance that is not limited to one county in far Southwest Virginia. It stretches across the state, and it is killing people.
Dickenson County Sheriff Frank Childress says he won't second-guess a magistrate's decision to set James Sol Fox free on bond after his battered girlfriend, fearing for her life, swore out a warrant against him. The sheriff was just doing his job and the magistrate was just doing hers.
Yes. But poorly.
Two days after he was released, Fox took his shotgun and blew away Jutannia Estep, their 1-year-old daughter and Jutannia's father, wounded her mother, then killed himself. In retrospect, anyway, it's clear he should not have been freed on his own recognizance but, as the county commonwealth's attorney suggested later, held for several days until the next court arraignment date.
There is no guarantee this would have prevented the slayings. Fox might have come out of jail four days later and done the same thing. He, not Magistrate Carolyn Mullins, is responsible for these deaths.
Yet the judicial system might have prevented them, had it acted with more understanding of the nature of domestic violence.
Again, there was no bad intent. As Mullins has pointed out, Fox had not been convicted, only charged, and suspects are entitled to reasonable bail. The charges he faced were misdemeanors; he had no criminal record, and he promised to stay away from Estep.
Other factors needed to be weighed heavily, though, and not just after the bloodbath: the vicious beating that Fox had given Estep, the fact that he was armed with a shotgun, and the threat he had made to kill her if she went to the police.
There's no magic method of predicting what a released suspect will do. But experts who have studied the research on domestic violence say there are three indicators to watch for in assessing the potential for a deadly outcome: beatings, guns, death threats. All were present in this case.
The question now is, what can be done to try to prevent similar outcomes in similar cases?
In Dickenson County, authorities have agreed informally that if a gun is involved in a domestic violence case, magistrates will be more likely to deny bond pending a court hearing with a higher judge.
That's just a start.
Law enforcement authorities at all levels, throughout the state, need to be better educated about domestic violence and the laws on the books to deal with it. It is important to know, for example, that the victim of an abuser tends to be at greatest risk in the 72 hours after a threat has been made. A cooling-off period in jail can save a life.
Then the police, the magistrates, the prosecutors and the judges in each locality need to coordinate a strategy for using the legal tools they have. The police must know, for example, that if they make an arrest, a magistrate won't release the suspect because the jail is overcrowded.
The laws have been strengthened. Police now have authority to make an arrest on the spot if there is probable cause to believe an assault has occurred.
At the suggestion of the Attorney General's Task Force on Domestic Violence, the General Assembly in the past two years passed this and other laws that prohibit stalking and that expand the definition of domestic violence to cover people who aren't married - including children, siblings, parents, anyone who lives in a household. This is important because, while simple assault is a misdeameanor, a third assault within a household becomes a felony.
Still, it takes three assaults - if the victim survives that many - before this crime is taken seriously.
Domestic violence accounts for an alarming number of deaths. Of the 584 homicides in Virginia in 1991, 12 percent involved spouses, parents and children, and other family members, according to the Department of Criminal Justice Services. Another 5.7 percent involved boyfriend-girlfriend situations.
Separating warring spouses is one of the most dangerous and frustrating jobs police face, but the potential for disaster demands that law enforcement agencies pursue these crimes as vigorously as possible.
Also, already bulging jails make it impractical to try simply to confine the problem behind cell walls. There's a lack of treatment programs for abusive men. This may be where lawmakers should look next.
Their job is not done.
by CNB