Wisconsin Justice Initiative President Craig Johnson (center) joins others from ACLU and the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign to tout a lawsuit targeting a proposed constitutional amendment aiming to bolster the rights of crime victims in a Capitol news conference Thursday.
A new lawsuit is seeking to block a proposed crime victim's rights constitutional amendment from ballots across the state this spring when voters are set to weigh in on the so-called "Marsy's Law" changes.
The leader of the Wisconsin Justice Initiative, which brought the suit along with three voters and Democratic state Sen. Fred Risser, argued Thursday the ballot measure's language "fails to accurately and completely describe the sweeping changes" proposed under the amendment.
"Wisconsin residents are being asked to vote on a single sentence that doesn’t remotely begin to describe what Marsy’s Law is or what it does," Wisconsin Justice Initiative president Craig Johnson said at a Capitol news conference.
But Marsy’s Law for Wisconsin chairwoman Teri Jendusa-Nicolai slammed the effort as "basically a slap in the face to survivors of all type of crime in the state of Wisconsin."
"I do believe in the intelligence of the voters of Wisconsin, that they do understand what they are getting into and what they are voting for," she told reporters, adding: "This has passed (the) Legislature twice. it has gone through many rigorous hearings, many rewordings and revisions, something that's been worked on for quite some time."
The amendment, which passed two consecutive sessions of the Legislature as required by state law and is set to go before voters in April, is part of a national effort seeking to enhance protections for crime victims. The language would largely duplicate existing state-mandated protections and in most cases, it would elevate existing statutory protections to a constitutional level.
The lawsuit, which also argues the ballot measure's language is unconstitutional, asks a Dane County Circuit Court judge to bar the state Elections Commission from putting the question before voters this spring.
A similar case in Montana two years ago made it to the state Supreme Court, which found that voters should have been able to consider different parts of the law in individual ballot initiatives, rather than a single one that was supported by a majority of voters the previous November.
In Wisconsin, if a court were to rule in Wisconsin Justice Initiative's favor, the Legislature would again need to pass the Marsy's Law joint resolution at least once, said Dennis Grzezinski, an attorney for the plaintiffs.
The amendment passed both session of the Legislature with broad bipartisan support, though it has raised concerns from some prosecutors and defense attorneys who say it could adversely affect the criminal justice process and includes provisions that may be unconstitutional.
Currently, the language that would appear before voters reads as follows: "Shall section 9m of article I of the constitution, which gives certain rights to crime victims, be amended to give crime victims additional rights, to require that the rights of crime victims be protected with equal force to the protections afforded the accused while leaving the federal constitutional rights of the accused intact, and to allow crime victims to enforce their rights in court?"
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