ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Saturday, April 27, 1996 TAG: 9604290029
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JAN VERTEFEUILLE STAFF WRITER
The nation is "confronted with an epidemic of violent crime targeted against women" and the justice systems in the states fail to provide equal protection to female victims, the U.S. Justice Department said in a brief filed in Roanoke federal court Friday.
Because of "dramatic" findings learned from four years of hearings, Congress passed the Violence Against Women Act in part to provide victims of gender-motivated crime equal protection under the law, the memorandum said.
The department defended Congress' authority to enact laws to ensure equal protection for all citizens as well as to regulate interstate commerce, which it said is hurt when women decline jobs in certain areas or at certain hours because of the fear of violence.
"Congress ... grants citizens for the first time the right to be free from gender-motivated violent crime," according to the brief.
Attorneys for two Virginia Tech football players being sued under the Violence Against Women Act have challenged the law's constitutionality. They are asking Chief U.S. District Judge Jackson Kiser to rule that Congress exceeded its constitutional powers when it passed the 1994 law.
Former Tech student Christy Brzonkala's suit accusing the players of raping her is one of the first civil suits brought under the law, whose constitutionality has yet to be ruled on by any court.
The law provides grant money for such things as police training, better lighting at bus stops and public parks, and domestic violence programs. It also gives victims who prove they were attacked because of their gender a civil-rights remedy, allowing them to sue their attackers for damages. Opponents say that part of the law goes too far, with Congress injecting itself into what they argue are state court and police matters.
Congress exceeded its authority in the areas of equal protection and interstate commerce, says Roanoke attorney David Paxton, who represents Tech linebacker Tony Morrison. He has been joined by the Center for Individual Rights, a Washington, D.C., civil liberties group that opposes such "hate-crime" laws on the grounds they discount the seriousness of the crime by concentrating on the motive or the "disapproved thoughts" that prompted it.
The 1994 law was passed in response to congressional findings that:
* Only 1 in 100 rapes results in the rapist being sentenced to more than one year in jail.
* Family violence poses the largest single threat of injury to adult women in the United States, according to the Surgeon General.
* The rate of assaults against women is rising twice as fast as those against men.
Friday was the deadline Kiser gave both the Justice Department and the National Organization for Women Legal Defense and Education Fund to file briefs in support of the untested law. NOW was joined in its brief by 10 other organizations, including the National Coalition Against Sexual Assault, the Anti-Defamation League and the National Network to End Domestic Violence.
The Justice Department's 35-page memorandum came with a 6-inch stack of exhibits to back up its points. The NOW brief is 45 pages long, with its own voluminous documentation.
NOW argues that the Violence Against Women Act treads new ground only in extending a new remedy to victims of gender-motivated crime. Otherwise, it follows in a long line of civil rights laws and is modeled after "traditional civil rights legislation" that has long been upheld by the courts, NOW says. The group also maintains that Congress was careful to narrowly tailor the law to keep from usurping state powers.
Attorneys for the football players have 10 days to respond to the briefs. Besides Morrison and his roommate James Crawford, who are accused of raping Brzonkala, the suit names defensive end Cornell Brown as a "principal in the second degree" for allegedly failing to intervene to prevent a crime. Brown testified at a campus judicial hearing that he was in the dorm room at the time of the incident in September 1994, although Brzonkala does not recall him being there, according to the suit.
Earlier this month the Montgomery County grand jury declined to indict Morrison and Crawford on rape charges.
Brzonkala is also suing Tech, but under a different law. She accuses the university of discriminating against her throughout its handling of the case because she is a woman and because the men are football players. Kiser is considering Tech's motion to dismiss the claims against it.
Paxton served three subpoenas this week in preparing his defense. He is seeking records concerning Brzonkala from Montgomery Regional Hospital and Wal-Mart and information about the activities of a student group called Women Against Rape. The group was started by friends of Brzonkala's, Paxton said, and he believes they were raising money for her legal expenses.
After the incident during the first month of her freshman year, Brzonkala said, the trauma caused her to drink heavily, skip class and attempt suicide. The hospital records concern the alleged suicide attempt; the Wal-Mart records involve a shoplifting incident that she said resulted from her mental state at the time.
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