Victims in court: protections, testimony and evidence-based prosecution

In mid-April, seven weeks after the assault, Megan Hollis called Nadia Brooks's office and said she wanted the charges dropped. She said Tyler had written to her from jail through a friend, that he was sorry, that he was getting help, and that Ava missed her father. She said she could not stand the idea of testifying. Brooks tells the class she has had that call hundreds of times. 'It almost never means the violence did not happen. It means the victim is frightened, exhausted, under pressure, or all three. Our job is not to argue her out of it. Our job is to explain what will happen, keep her safe, and make sure the case does not depend on her alone.'

This lesson is about what happens to victims of intimate partner and sexual violence when their cases go to court: the legal protections that exist to make testifying possible and fair, the special rules of evidence in sexual offense cases, and how prosecutors can proceed when a victim cannot or will not testify. Desjardins tells the class that officers are part of this stage too, both as witnesses and as the people whose investigation decides what evidence the prosecutor has.

Why victims recant

Recantation, in which a victim withdraws or changes an account, and reluctance to testify are common in intimate partner violence cases. Research that has examined jail phone calls between abusers and victims, including a 2011 study led by Amy Bonomi, found a recognizable pattern: the abuser minimizes the violence, appeals to the victim's sympathy by describing his own suffering, invokes their shared history and their children, and gradually persuades the victim that the two of them are on the same side against the system. Victims recant out of fear, love, financial need, concern for the children, pressure from family, or the belief that the abuser has changed. Some recant because they cannot face the court process itself. None of these reasons means the original account was false, and officers should not treat a recantation as proof of a false report.

In Ohio, the prosecutor decides whether to continue a prosecution, and many prosecutors' offices have policies against dismissing domestic violence cases simply because the victim asks. Under Marsy's Law, which became part of the Ohio Constitution in 2017, the victim has the right to be heard on matters such as a plea or dismissal, but the decision belongs to the prosecutor and the court. When Megan asked for the charges to be dropped, Brooks explained this, arranged for her to speak with the prosecutor, and reviewed her safety plan. The prosecutor told Megan the case would continue, that it was built on evidence other than her testimony, and that she would be supported whatever she decided about testifying. Megan later said that hearing the decision was not hers was, in a strange way, a relief.

Statements and the Confrontation Clause

The Sixth Amendment's Confrontation Clause gives an accused the right to confront the witnesses against him. In Crawford v. Washington (2004), the Supreme Court of the United States held that testimonial statements of a witness who does not testify at trial are admissible only if the witness is unavailable and the accused had a prior opportunity to cross-examine. In Davis v. Washington (2006), the Court held that statements made to a 911 operator to get help with an ongoing emergency are not testimonial, while in the companion case, Hammon v. Indiana, statements describing past events to officers at a scene after the emergency had ended were testimonial. In Michigan v. Bryant (2011), the Court said the question is the primary purpose of the conversation, judged objectively. Ohio courts have generally treated statements made to medical providers primarily for diagnosis and treatment as nontestimonial, and Evidence Rule 803(4) allows them as a hearsay exception. Under the doctrine of forfeiture by wrongdoing, recognized in Ohio Evidence Rule 804(B)(6) and limited by Giles v. California (2008), an accused who wrongfully causes a witness's unavailability with the intent of preventing testimony cannot rely on the Confrontation Clause to exclude that witness's statements.

Evidence-based prosecution

Prosecutors increasingly build intimate partner violence cases so that they can proceed with or without the victim's testimony, an approach often called evidence-based prosecution. The evidence comes from the investigation: the 911 recording, body-worn camera footage of the scene and the victim's first account, photographs of injuries and the scene, medical records, statements from neighbors and other witnesses, the suspect's own statements and messages, jail call recordings, and the history of earlier calls and orders. Desjardins tells the class that this is why Lesson 3 emphasized gathering evidence that stands on its own. 'An officer who records the first account properly, photographs the injuries, finds the neighbor and preserves the 911 call has given the prosecutor a case. An officer who writes down only what the victim said has given the prosecutor a witness who may not come.'

In the Hollis case, the prosecutor's file included Doreen Pike's 911 call, the body-worn camera footage of the scene, the forensic nurse examiner's strangulation documentation and Megan's statements to the nurse for treatment, the scene and follow-up photographs, Officer Okeke's observations of Kerr's knuckle and his comment that Megan was 'being dramatic,' Doreen's statement, the forty-three messages and the account records linking them to Kerr, and recordings of Kerr's jail calls. Kerr's lawyer saw the disclosure in July. On September 21, 2026, Kerr pleaded guilty.

Protections for testifying victims

Ohio victims have strong rights under Marsy's Law, which was added to the Ohio Constitution in 2017. They include the rights to be treated with fairness and respect for their safety, dignity and privacy; to reasonable and timely notice of proceedings; to be present and heard at proceedings involving release, plea, sentencing and parole; to refuse an interview, deposition or other discovery request by the defense; to reasonable protection from the accused; to restitution; and to proceedings free from unreasonable delay. Victims may be represented by their own lawyer to assert these rights. In sexual offense cases, Ohio courts may suppress the victim's name from public records on request, and Ohio law allows children and some other vulnerable witnesses to testify by closed-circuit or recorded means in certain circumstances. Courts in Ohio and elsewhere increasingly allow victim advocates to sit near a testifying victim and, in some courts, facility dogs to accompany child witnesses.

Sexual history and private records

Ohio's rape shield law requires the court to hold a hearing in chambers before admitting any evidence of the victim's sexual activity under one of the narrow exceptions, and the court must find that the evidence is material to a fact at issue and that its inflammatory or prejudicial nature does not outweigh its probative value. Defendants seeking a victim's privileged records, such as counseling records, must overcome strong statutory privileges, and courts may review records privately before deciding whether any must be disclosed. Marsy's Law strengthens the victim's ability to object. In the Reyes case, the defense applied in September to introduce evidence that Sofia and Brandon had kissed at a different party in February. The judge held an in-chambers hearing under 2907.02(E) at which a lawyer from a victims' rights legal clinic represented Sofia, and ruled the evidence inadmissible because it had no relevance to whether she was capable of consenting on March 8.

Delay and the victim

Delay is hard on everyone in a criminal case, and especially on victims, who often describe waiting for trial as an ordeal that keeps the assault in the present. Ohio's speedy trial statute, Revised Code 2945.71, requires that a person charged with a felony be brought to trial within 270 days of arrest, with each day in jail on the pending charge counted as three days. The time can be extended by the defendant's own motions and continuances, and defendants often waive the statutory time. The Sixth Amendment also guarantees a speedy trial. Marsy's Law gives victims the right to proceedings free from unreasonable delay.

# Checking a trial date against the delay limits (simplified; delay caused by the accused and waivers are left out)
from datetime import date
charge = date(2026, 4, 21)
trial  = date(2027, 1, 18)
days = (trial - charge).days
months = days / 30.44
print("days from charge to trial:", days, f"(about {months:.1f} months)")
# Canada: Jordan ceiling of 30 months in superior court
print("within the 30-month Jordan ceiling:", months <= 30)
# Ohio: 270-day statutory limit for felonies; triple count applies only to days held in jail
days_in_jail = 0      # released on bond the day after arrest
counted = days + 2 * days_in_jail
print("Ohio counted days:", counted, "-> within 270:", counted <= 270, "(unless tolled or waived)")

days from charge to trial: 272 (about 8.9 months)
within the 30-month Jordan ceiling: True
Ohio counted days: 272 -> within 270: False (unless tolled or waived)

The example shows how the same trial date can look different under the two systems. In Canada, the January 2027 trial in the Reyes case is far inside the thirty-month ceiling. In Ohio, the date is beyond 270 days, which means the case could proceed only because the defense's own motions tolled the time and Brandon's lawyer filed a written waiver of the statutory speedy trial time, which is common in serious cases. Desjardins tells the class that officers contribute to delay more than they realize: late disclosure, incomplete reports and unavailable witnesses all cost months.

Officers as witnesses

Officers will testify in many of these cases, and the principles from the evidence course apply: prepare by reviewing notes, video and reports; testify accurately and fairly; and do not overstate or understate. Some issues are particular to these cases. Officers should describe what they observed about the victim's demeanour, injuries and words without characterizing the victim's credibility, which is for the court. They should be ready to explain why they asked the questions they asked, such as strangulation questions, and why they made the decisions they made, such as identifying the primary aggressor. And they should expect cross-examination about anything that could suggest bias, including whether they had decided the accused was guilty before investigating. The best answer is a careful investigation that considered other explanations and recorded why they were rejected.

Sentencing and the victim's voice

At sentencing, victims have the right to describe the impact of the crime. Under Marsy's Law and Revised Code 2930.14, the victim has the right to be heard at sentencing and may make an oral or written statement. Kerr was sentenced on November 2, 2026. Megan read her statement herself. She said the night of February 22 was the first time she had understood that he could kill her, and that the hardest part since had been explaining to Ava why her father was not coming home. The court imposed a prison term of twelve months on the strangulation count, with credit for the time Kerr had served since March, a concurrent term on the protection order violation, and a requirement that he complete a certified batterer intervention program as part of supervision on release. Federal law and his felony conviction prohibit him from possessing firearms, and Megan's civil protection order, granted in April, remains in force until 2031.