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Memorial Laws: Laws Dedicated to the Memory of a Victim

Studying state sanctions against crimes has enhanced our understanding of the manner in which criminal laws are demanded by the public and the extent to which legislators attempt to appease those requests (Scheingold, Olson, & Pershing, 1994; Vitiello, 1997). Memorial Laws are one such type of criminal law. They differ somewhat from general criminal statutes in a number of ways. Memorial Laws call attention to specific acts, recognize particular victims, and pinpoint a distinctive need to control a precise activity. The origin of these codified bills with names of victims in their titles, or “personalized legislation,” began in state legislatures in 1994. Since the passage of the first state Memorial Laws, there has been little or no academic research into the topic. Consequently, the present work seeks to determine what patterns exist among states that have adopted personalized legislation versus those that have not. This study explores concepts in existing scholarship that could possibly explain the occurrence of this legislation in some jurisdictions and its absence in others. In particular, the study focuses on situational variables (e.g., the strength of advocacy groups backing a particular piece of legislation), political factors (the dominant political ideology within a legislative body), criminological elements (the impact of crime rates on the public), and sociological conceptions (the manner in which individual acts are transformed into social problems).

Background Definition of Memorial Laws Memorial Laws, also known as epitaph laws, tombstone laws, or eponymous laws, are codifications of legislative acts. They are named for specific victims of crimes and other acts of harm that have resulted in the suffering or death of residents of the state in which the law is enacted. The laws are labeled “Memorial Laws” because the legislation aims to memorialize a person who was seriously injured or killed by another. While the press has often popularized the names lawmakers have placed on bills introduced in state congresses and senates, most if not all of the names of Memorial Laws passed in the period covered by this study, 1994 to 2005, were suggested by the victims’ families.

History of Memorial Laws The legal evolution that prefaced the trend toward Memorial Laws began in the late 1970s, commencing with the victims’ rights movement of that era. The movement sought to alter the ways in which crime victims had previously been treated. Victims’ rights activists sought and won a number of protections and privileges between the 1970s and early 1990s. These protections will be described in more detail below, in the section labeled “Historical Review of Government Initiatives on Behalf of Victims.” Historically, on rare occasions the United States Congress had enacted laws with monikers such as the 1932 Lindbergh Kidnapping Act and the 1994 Brady Bill, but prior to 1994 there were no state-level Memorial Laws. The first such state law, enacted in New Jersey in 1994, was called Megan’s Law. Megan Kanka was kidnapped, sexually assaulted and murdered at age seven by a neighbor who had already been convicted twice of sexual offenses. The community pressured politicians for laws that would prevent such crimes in the future. Lawmakers quickly appeased the demands of the community and enacted the first state Memorial Law on October 31, 1994 (Levy, 1999). Megan’s Law paved the way for dozens of other Memorial Laws enacted across the United States.