Judge Eugene Hyman JD ’77 wrote an op-ed for the San Francisco Daily Journal about the need for our justice system to become more victim-centric. His op-ed addresses the fact that during the pandemic, awareness has been raised about dysfunctions in our courts and prison system, and that actions taken to correct those problems need to be carefully considered so those actions don’t imperil crime victims.
“There are many cases where expunging records and reducing felonies to misdemeanors are an incredibly dangerous enterprise, the most immediate example to me being in cases of non-fatal strangulation and other equal violence. A person who puts their spouse in the hospital, who’s statistically much more likely to commit homicide against that victim in the future, should not get a free pass because of concerns about the pandemic or our overburdened criminal justice system.”
Judge Hyman is retired from the Santa Clara County Superior Court, where he presided over cases in the criminal, civil, probate, family, and delinquency divisions for 20 years.
