In ​“Confronting Evil: Victims’ Rights in an Age of Terror,” Prof. Wayne Logan of Florida State College of Law exam­ines the use of vic­tim impact evi­dence in mass-vic­tim pros­e­cu­tions, such as the 1995 Oklahoma City bomb­ing and the ter­ror­ist attacks of September 11. The arti­cle will appear in the forth­com­ing issue of the Georgetown Law Journal. Victim impact evi­dence (VIE) is ​“infor­ma­tion on dece­dents’ per­son­al traits and the ways in which their deaths have adverse­ly affect­ed those left behind,” and it has been per­mit­ted in cap­i­tal cas­es since the Supreme Court deci­sion of Payne v. Tennessee (1991). Logan’s arti­cle reviews the his­to­ry of the use of VIE in the U.S. and abroad and ques­tions its par­tic­u­lar role in pros­e­cu­tions with many vic­tims.

Prof. Logan con­cludes that the prob­lems of VIE, includ­ing its emo­tion­al impact on tri­als, should lead to cau­tion by the inter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty in incor­po­rat­ing such state­ments: “[T]he inter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty would be well advised to exer­cise restraint if it wish­es to secure and main­tain the per­ceived legit­i­ma­cy of its tri­al and pun­ish­ment of those involved in the mass killing of innocents.”

(“Confronting Evil: Victims’ Rights in an Age of Terror,” by Wayne Logan, 96 Georgetown Law Journal 721 (2008)). See Law Reviews.

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