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Wisconsin Crime Victims Rights Board Rules Government As Victim In 2004 Police Killing

After Kenosha police officers killed his son and allegedly covered up what really happened, Michael Bell Sr. sued the city, its police department and four officers, resulting in a $1.75 million settlement, and took a leading role in passage of a state law that bars police departments from investigating themselves, the Marshall Project reports. But no one in the Kenosha department has admitted wrongdoing or, Bell says, adequately explained how his son ended up shot. At the suggestion of the governor’s office, he filed a claim with the Wisconsin Crime Victims Rights Board in 2022 contending that he’s been the victim of a long-running official cover-up of his son’s killing. The board is a five-member agency that can issue public or private reprimands to public employees who violate the rights of crime victims. The victims rights board ruled last November that if there was a cover-up, the victim wasn’t Bell, but rather the state of Wisconsin. “The alleged conduct is against the government and its administration, not against individual persons,” said the decision, which didn’t detail how the state was victimized.


Jennifer Dunn, the board chair, declined to discuss the board’s decision. The ruling troubled some victims advocates, who termed it a departure from the intent of the victims’ rights movement. “This is so counter to the purpose and the point of victims’ rights,” said Lenore Anderson, former prosecutor and author of "In Their Names: The Untold Story of Victims’ Rights, Mass Incarceration, and the Future of Public Safety.” She said she’d never seen a ruling that labeled the government a crime victim. The victims’ rights movement started in the 1970s because crime victims felt invisible or ignored in the criminal process, she said. Crime victims won the right to information about cases, the right to speak at sentencing or parole hearings and other rights. Bell is appealing the board’s decision. Bell’s appeal is unusual. Few crime victims appeal alleged violations because most lack resources, said Mariam El-menshawi, a professor at the University of the Pacific McGeorge School of Law who specializes in victims’ rights. In general, laws grant crime victims access to the criminal process but not control over prosecutorial decisions. In July, a trial judge listened to arguments about Bell’s appeal of the Crime Victims Rights Board decision. He noted that no matter how he ruled, the case — and the question of who is truly the victim — is likely to go to the state court of appeals, and then to the Wisconsin Supreme Court.

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