Dear Editor,

The writer of the editorial, "Tough, unnecessary talk" [Opinion, Feb. 29], about Marsy's Law, is clearly not a survivor of a homicide victim. The truth is that convicted criminals – murderers, rapists, gang bangers – have constitutional rights. Crime victims don't.

Some of the rights in Marsy's Law are not currently in the California Constitution and many of them are not even in statute. Those that are, for example, a victim's right to be present at court proceedings, have been watered down by politicians to the point where it's virtually useless.

I am writing this as Marsy's mother. She was a senior at University of California, Santa Barbara, studying to be a teacher of handicapped children. She was brutally murdered by a close-range shotgun blast to the head in November 1983, with an ex-boyfriend immediately charged with her murder. This came one year after the 1982 Constitutional Amendment you cite as the example of why we don't need Marsy's Law. A week after her funeral, we went to our local market and ran into her killer walking out of the store and found out that he was released on bail. We were never notified that he was released into our community.

I am proud of my son, Dr. Henry Nicholas, who is able to sponsor Marsy's Law and has been a tireless advocate for victims' rights for more than 25 years. This Victims' Rights Initiative is not about "pointless political grandstanding," but about giving victims the same basic rights that accused and convicted criminals have. I fervently hope all readers will vote for Marsy's Law in November 2008.

Marcella Nicholas Leach