Felony Prosecutor In Houston, Texas Convinced A Judge In Houston That She Was Not Mentally Capable Of Raising Those Children

The Victims of Crime Act, VOCA, the VOCA to provide the most consistent stable source of funding for services to crime victims. It included counseling, victim advocacy programs, safety planning, State victim compensation funds that would help crime victims recover the costs associated with being a victim. Yet the current budget proposes to rescind the over $1.2 billion presently in this fund and redirect its resources to the Department of the Treasury, where it will be treated in the general revenue. It would go to the greater business of the general fund.

Mr. Speaker, in all of my career I have been involved in the political process, I have been involved in the justice system. First in the District Attorneys Office where I served as a chief felony prosecutor in Houston, Texas, for about 8 years and then a judge in Texas for 22 years where I saw 25,000, 25,000 defendants come to court charged with crimes against an equal number of victims. And during all of that time I have witnessed in the United States the victims' movement, how victims have been treated in the system. And sometimes we have forgotten as a people in 2005 how victims have been treated over the past.

In fact, there are over 4,400 programs that provide vital victim assistance services to nearly 4 million victims a year because of these funds that are contributed by criminals.

Half of these victims receiving these services are victims of domestic violence. Other victims are victims of sexual assaults, child abuse, drunk driving, elder abuse, robbery, assault, and old-fashioned stealing. They receive this type of assistance through shelters and rape crisis centers, child abuse treatment programs. Prosecutors' offices received help, law enforcement agencies and victim advocates. All of these agencies received funds paid into this fund by criminals.

State crime victims compensation funds with VOCA funds help crime victims to pay for out-of-pocket expenses that they incurred while the criminal committed a crime against them. These expenses include medical care, counseling, lost wages, funeral costs, and many, many more.

You see, when a crime occurs, the victim has no recourse financially against a criminal, even though the criminal may be convicted and sent to our Federal penitentiaries. Criminals just do not have any money. So victims are compensated through this fund through fees paid by other criminals.

Many victims, when they suffer criminal conduct against them, have no insurance. This is what they look to to save their livelihood and their lives. Without victims' compensation funds in the United States, funded by VOCA programs, paid by the defendants, victims have two choices, live without this aid or ask taxpayers to pay in some form of taxation what defendants are now paying for and what defendants should pay for in the future.

It is ironic, Mr. Speaker, this is Victims Rights Week, the week that we proclaim in the United States the worth and value of victims, and yet it is the week that the budget is considering to reduce these funds, take these funds donated by criminals and put it in the general fund. How ironic this is.

Things have not always been as good for victims after the crime as it is now; and I think a history lesson is due, Mr. Speaker.

I tried numerous cases as a prosecutor, numerous defendants, death penalty cases, but I would like to talk about one person who really showed me the way of how victims continue to be victims after the crime was committed. And I have changed her name because her family still lives in Houston, Texas.

Back in the late seventies there was a young lady who was married and had a couple of sons that lived in Houston, Texas. She worked in the daytime. At night, she went to school working on a masters degree at one of our universities.

She left the school one evening. Her name was Lisa. And she was driving down one of our freeways and she had car trouble so she exited the freeway, Mr. Speaker, came into a gas station that she thought was open. It was not open. It was closed, but she did not know that. And she got out of the vehicle and started talking to an individual that she thought was a service station attendant.

Luke Johnson was not the service station attendant. He was just hanging around. One thing led to another, and Luke Johnson pulled out a pistol. He kidnapped Lisa, took her and her vehicle to a remote area of East Texas that we call the Piney Woods. He sexually assaulted her and pistol-whipped her. In fact, he beat her so bad that he thought he had killed her. Later, when he was arrested, he was mad that he had not killed her.

Lisa was a remarkable woman. She survived that brutal attack. She was found about 2 days after she was abandoned in the woods by a hunter that was going through that area. He stopped, rescued her and made sure that her medical needs were met.

After she recovered from this vicious attack, Luke Johnson was arrested and charged with aggravated rape. I prosecuted him for this conduct. A jury of 12 citizens in Houston, Texas, heard the case, heard Lisa testify in this case. Luke Johnson was convicted and received the maximum sentence of 99 years in the Texas State penitentiary as he earned and as he deserved.

Now we would have hoped as a people, as a culture that justice would have been done, that we would go on, that life would be good, but that is not, Mr. Speaker, the world that we live in. Because we live in a world far different from that.

As Luke Johnson is shipped off to the penitentiary where he belonged, Lisa could not quite cope with that crime. The first thing that happened was she never went back to school, never wanted to go on that campus again. The next thing that occurred was she lost her job. In fact, she was fired. She could not focus, and she bounced around from job to job. She started abusing drugs, first alcohol and then everything else.

Her husband, the sort that he was, decided he no longer wanted her. He sued her for divorce, convinced a judge in Texas that she was not mentally capable of raising those children that she had, and he got custody of both of them. He moved out of the State of Texas where he is somewhere else in this country today.