Justice Denied

From listening to the police scanner and reading their own police blotter, the staff at The Herald-Dispatch realized that reports of domestic violence were on the rise in Huntington, West Virginia. Yet court dockets showed no increase in the number of cases being prosecuted.

After weeks of analyzing more than 1,100 cases filed in the courthouse basement, reporter Jeanne Kennedy discovered that only five men charged with domestic violence had gone to jail. West Virginia, she also learned, is the only state in the nation that forbids officers to arrest batterers for probable cause.

Her stories prompted state lawmakers to pass a family-violence bill that strengthens the rights of victims and increases penalties against their abusers.

Huntington, W.Va. — Domestic violence accounts for more than one-fifth of all assaults in Cabell County, but few men are ever arrested, even fewer are tried, and almost no one goes to jail. When it comes to domestic violence, West Virginia’s legal system looks the other way.

The Herald-Dispatch spent several weeks examining how the state and local courts respond to domestic violence. What emerged from the analysis of more than 1,100 assault cases was a pattern of inattention and neglect that women’s rights advocates say must be corrected.

“Really, when it comes down to it, a woman and a bunch of kids aren’t safe. The cops aren’t there to protect you. There’s nobody there. You’re on your own,” says Evelyn Ferguson, a 41-year-old Huntington woman who has taken out two protection orders against her husband since March.

Another battered woman who wanted help from the local court claims that Magistrate Ozell Eplin snored in a back room one night while she waited, bloodied and bruised, to file a domestic warrant. “I hope I never have to go back down there to press charges against anyone again,” says Diane Blankenship, a 30-year-old working mother of two. “It’s just too messed up down there. The system doesn’t work.”

Here are the highlights of the newspaper’s examination of court records:

▼ A man charged with beating up his wife or girlfriend has only a one-in-20 chance of being prosecuted.

▼ The number of people seeking temporary restraining orders against a spouse or lover almost doubled from 1989 to 1990, and the rate is even higher this year.

▼ Of the 228 misdemeanor domestic-violence cases filed last year, only 11 went to trial. Nine ended in convictions — and four of those were guilty pleas. Only five men went to jail.

▼ The circuit court suspended two of the three jail sentences for accused batterers who had appealed — and in the third case, the man didn’t show up for his hearing.

Blankenship, who filed a complaint with the state Judicial Investigation Commission against Eplin, was later told there wasn’t enough evidence for an investigation. Eplin also denies that he did anything wrong.

“It was a disaster,” Blankenship says. “I really don’t know who’s in charge of that system, but they really ought to do something.”

Charges Dropped

Such dissatisfaction is not unusual. So far, the county has prosecuted less than five percent of the misdemeanor domestic cases from last year; 24 are still unresolved. For felony charges, only two of 10 were pursued and sent on to a grand jury.

“The magistrate system is where we have most of our problems,” says Sue Julian, co-director of the West Virginia Coalition Against Domestic Violence. “In addition to attitudes that revictimize women, the magistrates interpret the law differently from county to county, even from magistrate to magistrate.”

Cabell Magistrate John McCallister also faults the county court system. He says the number of domestic cases heard by magistrates has tripled over the last five years, leaving magistrates overworked and undertrained. But the problem, he says, also stretches from the police, who often squabble over who should serve legal papers in domestic cases, to the state Supreme Court, which fails to train magistrates on changes in domestic violence laws.

“The system definitely is failing,” McCallister says. “Everybody has to do their job. If everybody doesn’t do what they are sworn to do, it’s not going to work.”

Cabell County Prosecutor Chris Chiles says even the victims aren’t doing their part, and he blames them for the county’s low prosecution rate of domestic cases.

The Herald-Dispatch found that 45 percent of the women who brought charges against their husbands or boyfriends last year later dropped the cases, and another four percent failed to show up for their hearings. The prosecutor’s office itself dropped the charges almost one-third of the time because the victims refused to cooperate, Chiles says.

“Just the fact that 45 percent of them withdraw shows what the victims are after,” he says. “Sometimes I’ve had victims say, ‘If I proceed with this, can you guarantee me he won’t come after me again?’ Unfortunately, I can’t. I can say he won’t do that while he’s in jail and hopefully he’ll learn from his jail time, but I can’t even guarantee that.”

The victims aren’t the only ones frustrated with the system. Huntington police officer Don Maynard remembers a call last August that demonstrated what he sees as the problem in the way the state responds to domestic violence. A Guyandotte man had smashed a .30-06 rifle over the head of his live-in girlfriend. A month later — after one hearing and one continuance — the felony charge was dismissed.

“No, it didn’t surprise me,” Maynard says. “I’ve seen this before, and I still see them together now. It’s sad to say, but if the person who is injured wants to drop the charges in this state, there’s not much we can do.”

No Arrest

West Virginia is the only state in the nation that leaves the decision to prosecute a domestic violence case almost entirely up to the victim.

Other states either encourage or require arrests even if a victim doesn’t want to press charges. But in West Virginia, unless police witness an attack, the victim of a misdemeanor assault must sign a warrant before her abuser can be arrested.

That distinction, women’s rights advocates say, practically forces the legal system to look the other way when it comes to domestic violence. “The message is that domestic violence isn’t serious,” says Karyl Spriggs of the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence. “Your state is saying domestic violence isn’t as important a crime as other crimes. It’s like the government is sanctioning domestic crimes, saying it really is okay to beat your wife or girlfriend.”

Under current law, if police respond to a domestic violence call and find evidence of a struggle — furniture overturned, an injured woman crying, and a man rubbing his fist — no arrest can be made unless the woman goes to the courthouse and takes out a warrant. And even if she does, she still has the option to drop the charges later.

Thirteen states, however, have mandatory-arrest laws, which require officers to arrest an abuser without a warrant whenever there is probable cause. The rest have “pro-arrest” laws, which don’t require a warrantless arrest but encourage it. The benefit of both, proponents say, is that they remove the burden of prosecution from the victim, who often fears retaliation, and places it on the state.

“It’s the psychological key to the problem,” says West Virginia lobbyist Conni Lewis. “It’s the state saying, ‘This is wrong. You can’t do that.’ That reduces the likelihood that the cop will be back at the same house again with the same problem.”