mystikspiral
General Manager
Across the country, domestic violence survivors are punished by the criminal justice system. But 23-year-old Cleopatra Harrison is fighting back.
Large dark bruises on the front and side of her neck consistent with having been choked. Swelling to the right side of her forehead as if it had been hit with something or on something. Scratches on her chest and on the back of her neck consistent with having been in a struggle.
Columbus, Georgia police officer Michael Lincoln jotted notes as he spoke with 22-year-old Cleopatra Harrison at her home June 10, 2016. Cleopatra lived with her boyfriend, she said, and theyd gotten into a fight when he got home the night before because she hadnt done the dishes. He choked her against the wall, she told Lincoln, then threw her to the ground, continuing to choke her until she began to black out. Desperate to escape, she said she grabbed one of his hands and bent it backward, trying to break it, and wriggled free.
Her boyfriend had left the house and was probably at work now, Cleopatra told the officer. At his work, Cleopatras boyfriend told Lincoln that Cleopatra had started the fight, but admitted hed pushed and punched her. His wrist was swollen, Lincoln wrote in his report, which adds credence to Ms. Harrisons account. Lincoln arrested the boyfriend and booked him into the Muscogee County jail, and he was charged with aggravated assault.
Cleopatra had called the police for protection, but when she found out her boyfriend had been arrested and charged, she was unhappy disdain. For one thing, she made $12.18 an hour cleaning the mess hall at the U.S. Army base Fort Benning, but her hours were irregular, and her biweekly paycheck was usually $295. Her boyfriend made more than she did and she couldnt afford the rent by herself. She decided to go to her boyfriends hearing and ask the prosecutor to drop the charges.
They told me it was up to my choice if I wanted to come to court or not, Cleopatra told me during an interview in her lawyers office. I was told if I wanted to drop the charges I had to be there. She pulled her hands into the sleeves of her sweatshirt, wincing at the memory of what happened next.
Cleopatra assumed the hearing wouldnt take long, and had shown up to the Columbus Recorders Court on June 14 in her street clothes, planning to run home after court to change into her janitorial uniform and hairnet. She told her boss that she would be in for her shift right after the hearing.
When her boyfriends case was called, Lincoln testified that he had witnessed Cleopatras injuries, then Judge Michael Cielinski asked Cleopatra if she wanted to speak. Yes, shed called the police, Cleopatra explained, and yes, the assault had taken place, but no, she didnt want to press charges.
Theres a $150 assessment since you now want to dismiss the case, Cielinski told Cleopatra.
At first I didnt understand, Cleopatra said, so she turned to sit back down in the gallery where rows of people waited for their cases to be called. On the official court recording, Cielinski barks, Maam, get back here! You go with the deputy. She was led to the clerks office, where she explained to the deputy that she would get paid the following day but didnt have the money at that moment. The clerk asked Cleopatra to sign a paper giving her a seven-day grace period to pay the fee in full before she would be arrested and charged with a crime. Cleopatra took the obligation seriously, and made a mental note to set aside money to pay the fine. Then she started to leave the courthouse, unaware that anything was wrong.
The Columbus, Georgia, Recorders Court where Cleopatra Harrison was arrested.
Cleopatra had been charged what a lawsuit filed by the Southern Center for Human Rights (SCHR) called a victims fee. A Columbus city ordinance stated that theres [a] minimum charge of $50.00 for dismissing a case in recorders court, such charge to be paid by the prosecuting witness that refuses to prosecute the case. But the lawsuit argued the fee was illegal under Georgia state law, which does not permit such fees unless there is a finding by a judge that the alleged victims original complaint was both unfounded and malicious. Nothing about Cleopatras report or the police reports of a handful of other domestic violence victims involved in the lawsuit was deemed unfounded or malicious.
Theres no information on how many courts in the U.S. assess victims fees because victims dont report them. Cleopatra didnt know the fee she was charged could be illegal. The Southern Center only discovered that victims fees were being assessed in Cielinskis courtroom when an investigator working with the SCHR noticed a disturbing trend woman after woman was being charged a fine for making a decision not to testify in their abusers criminal case. Based on court observation by the SCHR, fees were often assessed to domestic violence victims, who ask to drop charges more often than victims of other crimes because they know their attacker. (Men are also often victims of domestic violence, but in this particular case all the victims were women.) The SCHR attorneys recognized it as a practice that was taking advantage of people who were not represented by counsel and approached Cleopatra about being part of the lawsuit. The Southern Center filed it as a class action suit because, according to the suit, hundreds of people are subjected to the illegal policies described in this complaint, but few are likely to have the time, legal acumen, and resources to pursue the claims at issue in this case on their own.
The fee wasnt the only way Cleopatra was victimized that day in the courthouse. She shouldve been allowed to leave she signed for the grace period after all. Instead Lincoln asked Cleopatra where she was going and grabbed her by the arm.
What have I done? Cleopatra said.
You lied to me, Lincoln said, according to Cleopatra. He pushed her face against the cement wall and handcuffed her, twisting her arms behind her back.
Why you putting me in handcuffs? she asked. She was confused; she had never committed a crime in her life.
You didnt tell me all of the story, Lincoln said.
Cleopatra was pushed into the police cruiser only 90 minutes after shed walked into the Columbus Recorders Court to attend her boyfriends hearing. Now she was the one being taken away to the Muscogee County jail, where she was photographed, stripped of her jeans, shirt, bra, and cell phone, and given a jail jumpsuit to wear.
Cleopatras arrest report says she was jailed for unspecified false information, Lincoln wrote, Subject lied to me on scene, then admitted it in court, with no further evidence indicated. The lie, it seems Lincoln was claiming, is that by asking to drop charges, Cleopatra was admitting she wasnt actually assaulted.
The strong-arming of domestic violence victims to press charges and testify against their attackers has been an unwelcome side effect of the criminalization of domestic violence. In the past, domestic violence was mostly seen as a private matter within a couple, not an issue for law enforcement. Marital rape wasnt outlawed in all 50 states until 1993. But since the victims rights movement began in the 1990s, law enforcement and domestic violence advocacy groups have increasingly relied on the criminal justice system to protect women from their abusers. Twenty-one states now have some version of mandatory arrest laws, which require any domestic violence call with probable cause to believe an assault took place to end in an arrest. (Georgia leaves arrest up to the officers discretion.) A 2001 study found that 66 percent of prosecutors offices have no-drop policies, which require prosecutors to continue with domestic violence cases even when the victim asks for the charges to be dropped. The victims fee Cleopatra paid is a version of a no-drop policy the latest of these policies to come to light thanks to the Southern Center lawsuit, even though its likely been in effect for years.
The Muscogee County Jail where Cleopatra Harrison was held.
The fee Cleopatra was assessed also comes with a city and county tax surcharge, and if someone cannot pay upfront, theyre charged extra. By the time Cleopatra paid her fee 24 hours later, it had increased to $212.50 almost her entire biweekly paycheck. If I dont have the money, Cleopatra says, I dont have the money.
After her arrest, Cleopatra says she told the intake officer that she was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and should not be placed in gen pop where she would be around a lot of other women. Her request was disregarded, and she was placed in a crowded gen pop area where female residents are double-bunked. She nearly had a panic attack. Without access to a lawyer, she huddled in her cot, avoiding the nasty water and food, experiencing increasing anxiety at being around so many people. She was scared and confused: Why would they put her here if they knew about her condition? Shed missed her work shift; would she be fired? Her body ached from being slammed against the wall. Although shed alleged hed abused her, she hoped her boyfriend would bail her out. She needed him.
Cleopatra did call the police after she was attacked, but shed been surprised that Lincoln showed up with plans to make an arrest. When Lincoln asked for her boyfriends work address, Cleopatra says, I thought they were going to talk to him to see what was going on, because normally theyd want to hear both sides. But unfortunately, they just went ahead and locked him up. The thing that upsets her most is that she the victim, the one who called for help wasnt given a choice in the matter.
This is the argument against mandatory arrest laws, no-drop policies, and victims fees: They ignore what the victim believes is in her best interest. Leigh Goodmark, a professor at University of Maryland Carey Law School who has represented domestic violence victims for over 20 years and is the author of A Troubled Marriage: Domestic Violence and the Legal System, says that the policies, while well-intentioned, turned on their heads and became an exercise of state power over victims.
There are all sorts of reasons women might not want their abuser arrested or prosecuted they may rely on them financially, for housing, child support, or childcare, or they may not want to relive the abuse by testifying and Cleopatra isnt the first to be punished for it. In Florida in 2015, a young mother was held in contempt of court and sentenced to three days in jail for her refusal to participate in her abusers trial. (He was convicted anyway and spent 16 days in jail.) The victim explained that she was homeless and did not want to participate because the last time her partner went to jail, he lost his job and she lost her child support. During her contempt hearing, when the victim said that she was feeling anxious, the judge mocked her by saying, You think youre going to have anxiety now? You havent even seen anxiety. In Maine in 2014, a 52-year-old woman was arrested for being in contempt of court when she refused to testify against her husband for a domestic violence charge, resisting a subpoena. She was held in jail for 24 hours. And a 2016 Tennessee investigation found that in one county, women were regularly jailed up to a week for not testifying against their alleged abusers. The prosecutor, when interviewed by the local news, defended himself by saying, Im not going to go back and apologize for what weve done, because I think we were doing the right thing.
Cleopatras lawsuit with the SCHR includes a few other examples of women who were also charged victims fees for their decision not to participate in criminal proceedings in Cielinskis courtroom. In May 2016, a Columbus woman who has chosen to remain anonymous was found by police after her boyfriend bashed her head with a handgun and left her on the side of the road. She was fined $200 by Cielinski for opting not to participate in the prosecution even though she never called the police in the first place and despite the ample evidence supporting her case. Another victim was fined $125 when she asked to dismiss charges against her boyfriend; she had a broken finger after the assault. A third woman was fined $150 for asking prosecutors to drop a case against her boyfriend, who had allegedly poked her in the eye and stolen her debit card. All three of these women had documented injuries.
No-drop policies like the Columbus victims fee are generally intended to punish false reporting and also encourage victims to strengthen the case against their abusers with their testimony. But a victim asking to drop charges has no bearing on the truth of her report, and prosecutors can go ahead with a case (and could even subpoena the victim to testify) regardless of the victims willingness to participate.
Cleopatra outside the house where she grew up.
Many in politics and law enforcement argue that mandatory arrest and no-drop policies have worked. Incidents of nonfatal domestic violence dropped 63 percent between 1994, when domestic violence was federally criminalized, and 2012, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics. But zooming out on the stats shows that violent crime in general decreased at the same rate during that time, so its hard to tell any real causation. Recent studies have raised further doubt that domestic violence criminalization has been as effective as previously thought. A 2015 study of more than 1,100 domestic violence victims in Milwaukee studied how safe victims were 23 years after police either issued a warning to their abuser or made an arrest, and found that No victims benefited from partner arrest, but black victims suffered most, experiencing near double the risk of mortality in the following years. And a 2007 analysis from the National Bureau of Economic Research found that domestic violence homicides actually increased under no-drop policies.
We absolutely want batterers to be prosecuted for their crimes, but we also want victim safety before, during, and after the prosecution to be central, says Allison Smith, the director of public policy for the Georgia Coalition Against Domestic Violence. We know that batterers retaliate against domestic violence victims who seek to hold them accountable via the criminal justice system, all with no guarantees that batterers will receive any meaningful punishment. A victim's choice not to assist in the prosecution of their case may be their best option for protecting themselves and their children.
Goodmark argues that prosecutors who refuse to trust a victims desire to drop the case are assuming that women dont know what is good for them. Its punishing women in the name of keeping them safe, she says.
Other factors, like economic prosperity, have a greater influence on decreasing domestic violence than jail time, Goodmark says, and other experts have agreed. She says advocacy groups and law enforcement need to work together to find alternative solutions that fit individual. One example is a program in Oregon called You Have Options that gives xesual violence survivors three options for how to report: information-only, which allows them to report but not engage in the investigation; partial investigation, which allows the survivor to engage in an initial investigation without having charges brought unless they opt to do so; or complete investigation with full involvement. Programs like this preserve information for later prosecution without forcing survivors to go through the criminal system before theyre ready to do so,Goodmark says. But they can also be costly and time-consuming, and are impossible wherever mandatory arrest laws are in place. (Mandatory arrest automatically eliminates the first two options and jumps right to the third.)
Perhaps the worst result of all this is that one-size-fits-all policies discourage women from calling the police in the event there is another violent incident. Fewer reports make police think their policies are working, which, according to the 2015 Milwaukee study, is why these policies havent been changed since the 90s. But it can also be dangerous to victims. Certainly, victims against whom this policy has been enforced will be significantly less likely to reach out in the future, Smith says, which only further endangers them and their children.
After Cleopatras experience, she says she told her boyfriend, I dont care what you do, Im not going back in there.
Twelve hours after she was booked into jail, Cleopatras boyfriend was able to pick up her paycheck and bail her out. She didnt lose her job; in fact, she told me that her supervisor laughed about it. But it wasnt a joke for Cleopatra. If Id been in there a little bit more, Id go crazy, she said solemnly. Id get in a fight. They dont have no air in there.
When she got out of jail, she lived with her boyfriend until he was arrested again and went to jail. Unable to afford her rent on her own, Cleopatra moved in with her mom.
Now 23, Cleopatra is scared to visit someone she knows in jail because it reminds her of the traumatic day she spent there. Shes still living with her mom, hoping to be able to get her degree to become a medical assistant something shes taken college classes toward, but has never been able to afford to finish. She gained some notoriety around town from the lawsuit and got embarrassed when her photo appeared on the local news in connection to the suit. But she agreed to be the face of the suit because she thinks its important to speak up for others and try to make a change.
This week, she won. The SCHR and the city attorney of Columbus reached a settlement which will pay back $75,000 of victims fees collected from crime victims over the last four years, and repeal the city ordinance that allowed victims fees to be charged in the first place. It wont stop mandatory arrests or other no-drop policies, which remain legal across the country, but lawyers at the SCHR hope it's a step toward ensuring victims' constitutional rights and giving them more power in the justice system.
Calls to Judge Cielinski for comment were not returned, and he has since retired from the bench. Calls to Officer Lincoln were directed to Columbus city attorney Clifton Fay, who confirmed via email that the city has instituted new policies and staffing in Recorders Court including the addition of two new public defenders, new record-keeping procedures, and appointment of an Interim Senior Judge and Interim Clerk." "Columbus is working with the Southern Center to resolve all issues raised," he continued, "and to ensure that all victims of domestic violence and other crimes are treated fairly and with dignity in our Court system.
After our meeting in her lawyers office, Cleopatra brought me to the blue clapboard house where she lived as a child with her grandmother the one place she remembers ever feeling safe and loved. She finds herself an unlikely warrior for social justice but has decided that the role suits her. She walked to a grove of trees that she said represents each of her grandmas grandchildren. Her tree was right out front, sprawling, with several low-hanging branches that were sturdy enough for her to climb.
This is my opportunity to do something for a change, Cleopatra said. She pulled herself up, eventually perching atop a high branch. Im not suing to get no money, she said. Im suing for my rights.
Source: http://www.cosmopolitan.com/politic...omestic-violence-victims-fees-no-drop-policy/
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I don't know how to feel about this. Why report DV to the police at all if you don't want them to do anything about it and you plan on going back to your abuser anyway? I can also see how these kinds of calls become tiresome if the same people report DV over and over without ever pressing charges. Tough problem.