The rather tortuous journey of Carolyn Robinson to vindication in the Supreme Court has a seedy beginning, with her 1980 conviction arising out of the fraudulent receipt of Connecticut public assistance benefits while receiving social security benefits at the same time. The timing of her conviction coincided with the early years of the victims’ rights movement, which gave increased significance to the condition of her probation that obligated her to make restitution to her victim. The burden of that financial obligation, in turn, led to a bankruptcy filing, which led in due course to the Supreme Court. Her tale warrants discussion here because the Supreme Court's rejection of her claim in Kelly v. Robinson has become the paradigmatic example of the Court's persistent elevation of other systemic values over a “close analysis of the statutory text” (Rasmussen 1993, 554 n.85).

CRIMINAL RESTITUTION AND VICTIMS’ RIGHTS

Much of Kelly's significance comes from its juxtaposition with the rise of the victims’ rights movement. The rapid rise of the movement during the late 1970s often is attributed to the Supreme Court's 1973 decision in Linda R.S. v. Richard D. The Court in that case held that the mother of an illegitimate child had no standing to challenge a prosecutor's refusal to prosecute the alleged father of the child for failure to pay child support. The opinion was widely noted both for the Court's statement that a crime victim seeking to compel prosecution is no more than “a private citizen [without any] judicially cognizable interest in the prosecution or non-prosecution of another,” and for its suggestion that legislatures could “enact statutes creating victims’ rights, the invasion of which [would] creat[e] standing.”

By the time President Reagan took office, the subject had sufficient popular traction to justify a national Task Force on Victims of Crime, which went so far as to recommend a victims’ rights amendment to the United States Constitution.4 Although Congress did not go that far, it did enact in rapid sequence the Victim and Witness Protection Act (1982) and the Victims of Crime Act (1984). Parallel legislative activity at the state level has been pervasive: every State now has adopted some form of victims’ rights legislation, and most have amended their constitutions (National Crime Victim Law Institute 2011.)