USSC to hear case on town's failure to enforce RO

[Romulus]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A17056-2004Nov1.html

The Supreme Court announced yesterday that it will decide whether victims of domestic violence have a constitutional right to sue local governments that fail to protect them from abusers.

Without comment or recorded dissent, the court said it would hear an appeal from a Colorado town accused of refusing to enforce a restraining order against a violent father who eventually killed his three children.

The town, Castle Rock, seeks to overturn a federal appeals court ruling that found it liable because it had not given the children's mother adequate notice of its non-enforcement or a chance to plead her case.

Castle Rock, supported by the International Municipal Lawyers Association and the National League of Cities, contends the Supreme Court must overturn that ruling to prevent a "potentially devastating" flood of lawsuits that "could bankrupt municipal governments . . . given the inevitability of less-than-perfect enforcement."

*snip*

The case is a sequel to one of the most emotion-laden cases in recent Supreme Court history, 1989's DeShaney v. Winnebago County, in which the justices ruled, 6 to 3, that a brain-damaged Wisconsin boy, Joshua DeShaney, and his mother could not sue local authorities who knew that the boy was being beaten by his father but did not stop the beatings.

In an opinion by Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, the court said the constitutional guarantee of due process of law did not "require the State to protect the life, liberty and property of its citizens against invasion by private actors."

*snip*

In the case the court agreed to hear yesterday, Castle Rock, Colo. v. Gonzales, No. 04-278, Jessica Gonzales is suing Castle Rock for allegedly failing to enforce a restraining order that barred her estranged husband, Simon Gonzales, from visiting their three children except at specified times.

Jessica Gonzales alleges that, when Simon Gonzales abducted the three children from her front yard, she repeatedly asked the police to bring the children back, but they would not act. Simon Gonzales eventually killed the children. He was killed in a gunfight with officers.

*snip/more*

Edited to add:
Apologies to Mods for the length.
It will be interesting to see how this one turns out, now that Rehnqey is laid up sick.

[iverglas]

1. for anyone interested

(and anyone who isn't, just feel free to say so)

I've mentioned the "Jane Doe" case in Toronto occasionally. Here's an interesting column about the aftermath of the case:
http://www.casac.ca/issues/janedoe.htm
(Michelle Landsberg is married to Stephen Lewis, the former leader of the Ontario New Democratic Party and current leading international AIDS Africa activist.)

Here's a summary of the case and decision:
http://www.sgmlaw.com/libr/index.asp?action=show&inhalt=case&area_id=2#case19

n 1986, Jane Doe was raped at knife-point by a stranger who broke into her apartment, from her balcony, while she was sleeping. In the seven months prior to the attack, four other women in her neighbourhood had reported to the police that they had been raped by a stranger in similar circumstances. The police were slow to link the assaults and did not devoted adequate resources to the investigation. Once they determined that a serial rapist was at large, they did not warn the women at risk.

... Represented at trial by Sean Dewart and Cynthia Petersen, Jane Doe sued the Board of Commissioners for the Metro Toronto Police on three separate grounds: negligence, a violation of her Charter equality rights, and an infringement of her Charter right to security of the person. On July 3, 1998, Madam Justice MacFarland ruled in her favour on all three counts.

The Judge held that the police owed a duty of care to the women in Jane Doe's neighbourhood and that they failed "utterly" in their duty to protect these women. She concluded that the police investigation of the so-called "balcony rapist" was "irresponsible and grossly negligent".

The Judge also accepted Jane Doe's argument that the reason for the shoddy investigation was that the police did not take the crime of sexual assault seriously. The evidence at trial demonstrated that the police were aware of long-standing systemic problems in the way that they investigate rape, yet no genuine efforts had been made to correct the situation. The problems stemmed from the fact that the police were motivated by rape myths and sexist stereotypes about women, which impeded their investigations. Sexist thinking also informed the police investigators' decision not to warn the women in Jane Doe's neighbourhood about the "balcony rapist". They believed that, if warned, women would panic and become hysterical, so they deliberately withheld information that could have empowered women to take appropriate measures to protect themselves.

While the police obviously cannot be held to have a duty to do the impossible, they surely have a duty not to deny the equal protection of the law -- to make equivalent efforts to protect everyone to the same level (recognizing that some people, like children, need more protection than others in order to reach that level) -- even under that weaker provision of the US Constitution (i.e. in the absence of the broader "equal benefit" of the law, the requirement that the "fundamental principles of justice" and not just due process be followed, and the tough and express equality provisions, in the Cdn Constitution).

If police respond differently to criminal offences in "domestic" situations (i.e. situations in which women and children, who commonly need more protection in order to be safe to the level of others in the community, are overwhelmingly the victims) than to similar non-"domestic" offences in which the "life, liberty and property of citizens" are being "invaded by private actors" --

Jessica Gonzales alleges that, when Simon Gonzales abducted the three children from her front yard, she repeatedly asked the police to bring the children back, but they would not act.

-- surely they are denying the equal protection of the law and should be held liable for their (in)actions.

[Romulus]

2. I was interested!

Thanks! :hi: