DATE: Saturday, September 27, 1997          TAG: 9709270440

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B5   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY LIZ SZABO, STAFF WRITER 

DATELINE: NORFOLK                           LENGTH:   65 lines

DOLAN, EARLEY AGREE CRIME VICTIM PROGRAM SHOULD BE EXPANDED

If elected, both candidates for Virginia's attorney general promised to expand statewide a victim notification program that began earlier this year as a pilot program in Chesapeake.

Victim Identification and Notification Everyday - better known as VINE - is a computerized system that automatically telephones the victims of crime when a perpetrator is released or escapes from jail.

Democrat William G. Dolan III and Republican Mark Earley praised the system at a Norfolk forum presented Friday night by the Hampton Roads Coalition Against Crime, an alliance of five victims' rights groups.

Their support for VINE was one of many subjects upon which the candidates agreed. Both pledged to protect the rights of crime victims and their families during a debate moderated by television news anchor Barbara Ciara.

``It's a great example of how high technology can help us,'' Earley said.

Earley and Dolan said they support legislation to clarify the right of crime victims' families to testify before sentencing in a criminal trial. Families already have the right to address juries in capital murder trials, Dolan said. Their rights are less clear in other cases, he said.

Both candidates also rejected several proposals.

Earley and Dolan also dismissed the idea of incarcerating juvenile offenders until they are 25. Young offenders now may be incarcerated in juvenile facilities until age 21, Earley said.

And the two candidates rejected the idea of permitting juries to convict an accused person by majority rule - rather than by a unanimous vote - as well as a suggestion to mandate the death penalty for those convicted of murdering police officers in the line of duty.

Dolan and Earley agreed that judges and juries should have flexibility in sentencing.

``I've been involved in two of these cases'' of police officers killed at work, Dolan said. ``From a family point of view, it's devastating. It's numbing, as people in this room have experienced. But juries in Virginia have common sense. We have the kind of juries that will come to the right conclusion with the right facts'' without mandates.

Earley differed from Dolan when he supported a suggestion to sentence those who use firearms in a felony to a mandatory 10 years in prison. Dolan supports Virginia's current mandatory three-year sentence.

Longer mandatory sentences, Earley said, ``would have a deterrent effect on the front end, and it would have a deterrent effect on crime on the back end, in that those who inflict that kind of violent crime would not have the opportunity to do so again any time soon, if at all.''

Maureen Wash Cuthrell, president of Old Dominion COPS, said the nonpartisan coalition supports legislation to protect crime victims and their families, said Maureen Wash Cuthrell. Old Dominion COPS is a support group for families of slain police officers. Cuthrell's father, a police officer, was killed in the line of duty.

``We felt it was very important that victims' groups have a forum where they could present their questions to those running for attorney general, since they're in a position to help victims,'' Cuthrell said.

The nonpartisan coalition does not back individual candidates.

But it does support a number of legislative changes.

``In the case of a murder conviction, we feel the appeal phase should be shortened,'' Cuthrell said. ``The families have to go through years and years of appeals, so it just resurfaces all their pains, year after year.''

The Hampton Roads Coalition Against Crime includes Victims Against Crime Inc.; Families and Friends Against Crime Today Inc.; Mothers Against Crime Inc.; Old Dominion Concerns of Police Survivors, or COPS; and Virginians United Against Crime.

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