Men who beat their wives or girlfriends can also beat the system.
Many are never arrested.
While Roanoke police responded to 4,535 calls of domestic violence last year and magistrates heard countless other complaints, just 1,139 assault charges were resolved in court.
Of those arrested, many are never convicted.
Roanoke Juvenile and Domestic Relations Court logged just 202 convictions out of the 1,139 assault cases last year – an 18 percent conviction rate. In many cases, judges dismissed the charges despite finding enough evidence to convict.
Of those convicted, many never go to jail.
Roanoke judges gave suspended jail time or no time at all in more than two-thirds of the 202 cases that ended with convictions last year.
Those numbers show that the system is failing the people it needs to protect, advocates for battered women say.
“My major concern is the message we’re giving to the victim, her family, the community at large and the perpetrator is that you can get away with it,” said Ellen Brown, director of the Women’s Resource Center at Total Action Against Poverty. “There are times when there’s no consequences for a clear-cut crime.”
Judges, police officers and prosecutors say they do the best they can, but domestic violence is one of the most difficult crimes to prosecute. Victims are often reluctant to pursue charges, and their resolve can weaken further during the slow-moving legal process of serving warrants, scheduling hearings and finding witnesses.
Charges can pile up faster than the system can handle them.
Sometimes the results are fatal: Linda Miller was shot and killed Jan. 20 by an abusive boyfriend she had repeatedly taken to court. Tyrone Turpin, who was due in court the following week on his latest charge, then killed himself.
While Miller’s death was a worst-case scenario, police and courts deal with thousands of cases day in and day out, never knowing which one might become the city’s next horror story.
Hard to track repeat offenders
People who work with the results of domestic violence will tell you the conviction rate is low. Yet no courthouse office, state agency or private group could provide exact figures to back up the premise.
In March, The Roanoke Times requested statistics from the Virginia Supreme Court under the state’s Freedom of Information Act. Because numbers were not readily available, court officials created a computer program to comply with the newspaper’s request.
These are the results:
Roanoke’s 18 percent conviction rate for domestic-related assault charges last year was below the statewide average of 31 percent, and less than half the 44 percent rate in Roanoke County.
The conviction rate for most serious felonies handled in Circuit Court, by comparison, is closer to 80 percent.
The Supreme Court’s computer analysis counted misdemeanor domestic abuse charges that can be brought against either a man or a woman for assaulting any family or household member. However, court officials said 80 percent to 90 percent of the cases involve men charged with assaulting women.
The analysis did not include felonies and other domestic-related misdemeanors.
In 47 percent of cases heard in Roanoke Juvenile and Domestic Relations Court, judges dismissed the charges. Court officials said that in a large majority of those cases, judges heard testimony and said there was enough evidence to convict.
But the cases were taken under advisement, meaning that the charge was eventually dismissed – usually after 12 months – if the defendant stayed out of trouble and completed court-ordered treatment for anger problems, alcoholism or substance abuse.
“That dismissal percentage can be very misleading,” said John Ferguson, who as the court’s chief judge hears cases in the city along with Judges Joseph Bounds and Joseph Clarke.
Ferguson said that just because a case is dismissed after being taken under advisement doesn’t mean the defendant walked free.
“There is no lack of concern by the court for domestic abuse of any type,” Ferguson said. “The judges take this very seriously.”
Prosecutors say it’s appropriate to take some cases under advisement, but they say it happens far too often.
“I would rather the judges examine the evidence and if they determine we’ve proven the case beyond a reasonable doubt, then they should find the defendant guilty,” said Alice Ekirch, an assistant commonwealth’s attorney who handles domestic abuse cases in the city.
Taking charges under advisement makes it harder to identify repeat offenders, Ekirch said, because they have nothing on their record to mark them. People convicted of three or more domestic assaults can be charged with a more serious felony.
And when cases are taken under advisement, it’s possible for a defendant to be arrested a second or third time with no consequences for the first time.
For example, Turpin was charged in 1998 with assaulting Miller, and the charge was taken under advisement that July for 12 months. During the following year, he was convicted of three more offenses against Miller – another assault, making threats and brandishing a firearm.
Yet the first charge taken under advisement was dismissed in July of 1999 as if nothing had happened.
Critics say the system could do a better job of monitoring cases taken under advisement. One way to do that is to assign a probation officer from the Court-Community Corrections Program to supervise the defendants. The officers check defendants’ records for new charges and make sure they attend anger control counseling or other court-ordered treatment.
Judges in Roanoke use the program far less often than in Roanoke County.
There were just 20 referrals to Community Corrections in the city last year, compared with 104 in Roanoke County and Salem, according to Katie Van Patten, assistant director of the program.
When judges take charges under advisement with no supervision, “the message that sends is the assault [the defendant] just committed isn’t important enough to us as a society that it’s worth keeping track of,” said Rita Smith, executive director of the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence in Denver.
Witnesses often won’t testify
On any given day in Roanoke Juvenile and Domestic Relations Court, bored adults and screaming children wait in a crowded lobby as cases are called one by one. Many times, no one gets up from the seats when a name goes out on the public address system.
In 32 percent of the cases heard in Roanoke last year, the charges were nol prossed, meaning that prosecutors dropped the charge with the understanding that it could be refiled later.
Ekirch said that usually happens when a reluctant witness refuses to show up to testify. And that happens a lot.
Battered women are often unwilling to pursue charges for a myriad of reasons: They fear that reporting one beating will provoke another. They have no place to live if they leave their abuser. They don’t want to pull their children from the home. They lack the money or mental fortitude to live on their own. And many times, they mistakenly believe that if they do nothing, the beatings will stop.
“They love the person. It’s the behavior that needs to stop,” said P.J. Gold, domestic violence specialist for the Roanoke Police Department. “They think they have a chance of working things out. They don’t know that they’re a statistic.”
Police and prosecutors tell stories of women who are beaten black and blue, then follow the police car downtown and wait to bail their husband or boyfriend out of jail. Of women who show up for court holding hands with the defendant. Of women who resent it when prosecutors press them to explain their telltale bruises.
“They become hostile to us a lot of times, and you end up having to cross-examine and impeach your own witness when they recant,” Roanoke Assistant Commonwealth’s Attorney Ann Gardner said.
Prosecutors in Roanoke, Roanoke County and Salem all have a “no-drop policy,” meaning that they refuse to nol pros a domestic assault charge at the victim’s request before it goes to court.
“If it was serious enough that they got a warrant, or they called the police, or the neighbors called the police, then we feel the court needs to hear it,” Roanoke County Commonwealth’s Attorney Skip Burkart said.
So assuming the victim shows up, she’s required to testify. Some recant, some say they can’t remember what happened, some say they started the fight. Whatever the case, Burkart said, all he can do is put them on the witness stand and ask them what happened.
“I’m not going to participate in the fraud” by dropping charges, he said. “If they want to commit perjury, I can’t stop that.”
Trompeter seen as tough judge
When a woman does cooperate and prosecutors get a conviction, jail time is not automatic the way it is for some misdemeanors, such as subsequent drunken driving or repeat shoplifting charges.
Supreme Court figures show that of the 202 domestic-abuse convictions in Roanoke last year, just 66 led to a jail sentence. Eighteen defendants received sentences of one to 20 days; 48 were sentenced to 21 days or more.
“I think if a man beats a woman, he needs to go to jail,” said Darlene Young, who runs the Turning Point shelter for battered women in Roanoke. “Take it under advisement? He could kill her next time.”
Roanoke County, with a conviction rate of 44 percent, seems to be doing a better job than the city, Young said.
Some say it’s no surprise that a suburban and rural county would have a greater conviction rate than a city, which has substantially higher caseloads and more poverty and socioeconomic problems.
Van Patten, of the Court-Community Corrections Program, says another difference is that county cases are often bolstered by testimony of police officers who respond to a call. Women in the city seem more likely to swear out charges before a magistrate than dial 911.
“When you go into the city, there’s frequently not an officer there, so it’s he-said she-said, and you don’t know who to believe,” Van Patten said.
Others say the county has something the city doesn’t – Judge Philip Trompeter, long known for his tough stand on domestic abuse. Trompeter used to hear cases in the city, but now presides in Roanoke County and Salem.
“He’s been a godsend for us since he came out here,” Burkart said. In 1998, Roanoke County had a 56 percent conviction rate. Salem’s rate was 34 percent in 1999 and 53 percent in 1998.
Defense attorneys have another explanation for low conviction rates. They say that people involved in domestic spats are sometimes prone to swearing out false or greatly exaggerated charges before the magistrate.
“It’s a powerful weapon for angry partners,” Roanoke Assistant Public Defender Jay Finch said of a system that allows citizens to level charges without police intervention.
Prosecutors concede some cases are bogus. “Anybody can run down to the magistrate’s office and swear out a warrant,” Ekirch said.
Sending the wrong message?
Although Roanoke has a low conviction rate in domestic abuse cases, the city is not alone – as evidenced by last year’s statewide rate of just 31 percent.
Nationally, an estimated 6 million women are assaulted by their male partners each year. The U.S. surgeon general has said that domestic violence is the leading cause of injury to women between the ages of 15 and 44, accounting for more trauma than car accidents, muggings and rapes combined.
Recent statistics show a downturn, though. The U.S. Justice Department announced last week that the rate at which American woman are attacked or threatened by intimate partners dropped 21 percent in the mid-1990s.
Across the country, a weak response to domestic violence in state courts prompted Congress to pass the Violence Against Women Act in 1994. The act allows for federal prosecutions in some cases of domestic violence, and since its inception has pumped $1 billion into domestic violence units and coordinators to assist at the state level.
Some say it’s unrealistic to expect police and courts to solve a broad-based societal problem.
Smith, of the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence, said people need to get serious about the issue in the same way they did in the 1980s with drinking and driving.
Trompeter said he is concerned that low conviction rates might be sending the wrong message. But convictions and jail sentences should not be the only measure of progress, he said.
“Society can’t look just to us to stop the problem,” he said. “But I think that society can fairly look to us to set a norm that it’s not going to be tolerated.”