Courtroom Animal Advocate Programs: Approaching Animals as Quasi-Party Crime Victims
« Starting with Connecticut’s Desmond’s Law, Courtroom Animal Advocate Programs provide a statutory basis for courts to appoint independent pro-bono counsel to assist the judge, prosecutor, and defense counsel in meeting the interests of animals involved in cruelty cases. As such, these laws unite the goals of two legal fields: victim rights law – which argues that crime victims have a meaningful place in their own cases – and animal law – which argues that animals have legally cognizable interests.
The Animal Legal Defense Fund’s David B. Rosengard joins Justice Clearinghouse in examining different approaches these laws take to spotlighting the needs of animals as crime victims, and ways that Advocates working under these programs give rise to better outcomes, by fulfilling a role separate from that of either the prosecutor or defense.
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Organisé par The Justice Clearinghouse