Courtney Wild v. United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida

In 2004, Congress enacted the Crime Victims’ Rights Act (CVRA), 18 U.S.C. § 3771, a comprehensive bill of rights for federal crime victims with specific enforcement provisions. Among the rights that the CVRA confers on crime victims is the “reasonable right to confer with the attorney for the Government in the case.” 18 U.S.C. § 3771(a)(5). In the case below, a child sex trafficker—Jeffrey Epstein—was able to negotiate a secret, pre-indictment non-prosecution agreement (NPA) with federal prosecutors. Even after the agreement was consummated, Government lawyers did not confer with Epstein’s child sex abuse victims about it and misled them about the agreement’s existence. App. 2. Over vigorous dissents, the Eleventh Circuit en banc held below that it could not examine the Government’s “shameful” failure to confer with Epstein’s victims because the CVRA “does not authorize a victim to seek judicial enforcement of her CVRA rights in a freestanding civil action.” App. 3, 68. The en banc decision leaves the Government free to negotiate secret, pre-indictment non-prosecution agreements without informing crime victims. The question presented in this case is: Whether the Crime Victims’ Rights Act (CVRA), 18 U.S.C. § 3771 (2004), a comprehensive bill of rights for federal crime victims with specific enforcement provisions, contains rights-creating language that allows crime victims to bring a suit to enforce their right to confer with prosecutors and other CVRA rights before the Government files a federal indictment.