Please Vote This Tuesday on Marsy’s Law

If you are a voter in PA, and you vote Tuesday (which of course you all will) I urge you to vote no on a proposed amendment to the Pennsylvania Constitution which will appear on the ballot. It’s called Marsy’s Law and it’s intended to provide crime victims with an array of constitutional protections, like providing the victim with a constitutional right to block “discovery,” which means obtaining documents and materials relevant to the case. It would also allow a victim’s attorney to deny requests to delay the case in order to have time to locate key witnesses, or obtain lab results.

On its face this seems OK, but some of these protections go too far (the right to refuse discovery and the right stand in the way of an otherwise validly requested continuance). On the whole, Marsy’s Law would do harm to rights enshrined in the Constitution that protect us from governmental overreach when the government applies all of the weight and resources at its disposal to prosecute you for a crime.

I had the opportunity to debate the issue on the KD/PG Sunday Edition this morning. Please check it out, and consider voting no — but, above all, please vote.

 

—Jacob W. Wyland, Esq