Reply #11: She says exactly what you say...

[madmusic]

From a constitutional perspective, there is no crime until a jury unanimously agrees that the prosecution has proved beyond a reasonable doubt that this defendant committed one, or the defendant, by a plea of guilty, admits its commission. Likewise, until a crime has been proved, there is no victim.

By merely altering the characterization of the participants, the nature of the process is transformed from accusatorial to inquisitional. If there is a victim in the courtroom at the defendant's first appearance when bail is set, there must have been a crime.29 If a crime took place, it must have been committed by the man in custody, whom everyone is now referring to as the perpetrator. And, these revisions of the legal vernacular are almost benign compared to the state constitutional and state and federal legislative changes that have occurred.30

Prosecutors recognized early on how the victims' rights mantra could be used to make drastic changes in criminal law and procedure that would increase their ability to obtain convictions and death sentences, but had little to do with meeting the needs of crime victims.31 For example, two California ballot initiatives—in 1982 and 1990-were passed under the victims' rights banner head that changed the rules of evidence in criminal cases, abolished the right to bail, deprived the state supreme court of the ability to interpret the state constitution in a way that was more protective of our rights than the federal constitution allowed, and eliminated the right of lawyers in criminal cases to question prospective jurors.

http://www.gtu.edu/news-events/events/lectures-and-addresses/mccoy-lecture/elisabeth-semel-s-response