The stories sound like the plot lines of hit movies, from “Fatal Attraction” to “Sleeping With the Enemy” to “Cape Fear.” But increasingly, state legislators are hearing real-life versions, and they are responding with astonishing speed. California passed the first “anti-stalking” law in 1990, making it a crime to repeatedly follow or harass someone with a “credible threat” to cause fear of bodily harm. Since then, 20 more states have enacted similar laws, and at least a dozen others are considering them. Most make the first stalking offense a misdemeanor, punishable by up to one year in jail and a $1,000 fine, with felony counts and stiffer penalties for repeat offenses. Florida’s law, which went into effect last week, even allows police to make arrests without obtaining a warrant.
Behind almost every state bill has been at least one local tragedy. Wisconsin lawmakers acted after Shirley Lowery was fatally stabbed 19 times, allegedly by her ex-boyfriend in a Milwaukee courthouse where she had gone to obtain a protective order. Virginia lawmakers were moved after Regina Butkowski’s mother testified that her daughter had been stalked for six months by a weight lifter who finally shot her, set her body on fire and dumped it into a creek, where it was found eight months later. Georgia’s proposed law may pick up more support after the sad case of Joyce Durden, whose estranged husband carried out his repeated death threats last month. He gunned her down at a school where she taught mentally disabled preschoolers, then shot himself in the head.
Such horrifying examples aside, no one can say how widespread a problem stalking is-mainly because it has never been a crime category before. The new laws aim at halting a pattern of threats and harassment that often precedes violent acts, from assault to rape, child molestation and murder. Some of the most publicized cases have involved celebrities, like actress Rebecca Schaeffer, fatally shot by an obsessed fan, Robert John Bardo, in 1989. A few stalkers fixate on coworkers or complete strangers, and not all victims are female; women sometimes stalk men. But the vast majority of cases involve former lovers or spouses. Nearly one third of all women killed in America are murdered by their husbands or boyfriends, and, says Ruth Micklem, co-director of Virginians Against Domestic Violence, as many as 90 percent of them have been stalked.
Some civil-liberties experts argue that the new laws are overly vague and carry a potential for misuse, particularly in marital disputes. “There are very often false allegations made in all sorts of contexts against spouses or former spouses,” says Miami criminal-defense attorney Jeffrey Weiner, who thinks Florida’s no-warrant provision may be unconstitutional. Critics also say that people who fear for their safety can already apply to the civil courts for restraining orders. But such orders are notoriously hard to enforce, and all too often, the first violation is fatal. The California law was drafted after five Orange County women were killed in a six-week period in early 1990. All but one had sought help in vain from authorities. “What does he have to do-shoot me?” 19-year-old Tammy Marie Davis asked police just days before an ex-boyfriend did just that, fatally, in Huntington Beach. When Patricia Kastle, a one-time Olympic skier from Newport Beach, was shot by her former husband, police found a restraining order in her purse.
Will the laws actually deter such crimes? Much depends on what twisted logic motivates the stalker. “A lot of these people are just caught up in the emotion of a bad breakup,” says David Beatty of the National Victim Center in Arlington, Va. “Sitting someone down in jail for a while may make him rethink his actions.” But some stalkers are mentally deranged. Stanton Samenow, a Virginia clinical psychologist and author of “Inside the Criminal Mind,” says that many have disturbed self-images in which they see themselves as irresistible or complete zeros. When they are rejected, they resort to intimidation in a desperate attempt to try to regain self-esteem. The threat of prison may deter some of them, but for others, says Samenow, “it’s like putting fuel on a fire.”
For the anti-stalking laws to have a real impact, courts must take them seriously and apply the new legal muscle they provide. Ironically, the first person sentenced under California’s law, Mark David Bleakley, was put on probation and ordered to serve time in a psychiatric facility. Unsupervised, he wandered away and was found waiting outside his victim’s health club. Fortunately, he was reapprehended before he could harm her and sentenced to three years in prison.
Kristin Lardner wasn’t so lucky. The 21-year-old Brookline, Mass., art student .was murdered by her former boyfriend in May, just two weeks after the state’s anti-stalking law went into effect. Michael Cartier had already served six months in jail and was on probation for attacking another ex-girlfriend. He was attending a violence-treatment program when he began beating Lardner. She reported the incidents to the police, who issued a warrant for his arrest. She also obtained two restraining orders from civil-court judges, but they were unaware of the outstanding warrant and merely barred Cartier from going within 200 feet of her. That didn’t faze him. On May 30, Cartier waited outside the liquor store where Lardner worked and shot her repeatedly as she walked down Boston’s Commonwealth Avenue. Police found him in his apartment, dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. “The restraining orders don’t restrain, and I strongly suspect the new anti-stalking order won’t hunt,” says Kristin’s father, Washington Post reporter George Lardner.
Massachusetts has since instituted a number of reforms-including computerizing all records of restraining orders and violations. By fall, any police officer or judge should be able to cross-reference them to pinpoint repeat offenders. In Brookline, civil-court judges now routinely look at criminal records of all accused batterers. A committee of the chief justice’s office is also studying the idea of outfitting stalkers and their victims with electronic monitoring devices, like those used in house-arrest cases, that would automatically sound an alarm if a stalker came within a certain range.
ADT Security Systems is testing another kind of personal-alarm system for battered women. The victim wears a pendant around her neck, and if she spots her stalker, she presses a button that triggers an alarm at an ADT monitoring station, which in turn alerts police. The system isn’t foolproof, however. It works only in close range of a receiving device installed in her home, and a determined stalker could foil it by disconnecting the phone lines. Six Tampa, Fla., women, all former residents of The Spring women’s shelter, have been wearing the beepers for the last six months. But only one has used it, when her ex-husband turned up at her home, daring her to shoot him. Police arrived, but the episode left the woman so shaken that she handed in her beeper and went underground. Staffers at The Spring say they don’t know what’s become of her.
Other desperate victims have taken to packing their own weapons. Sabine Tsang, 27, had filed numerous futile complaints about a former co-worker. Last month, when Irineo Dominguez allegedly accosted her in a parking lot and ordered her into her car, she pulled out a handgun and shot him twice in the abdomen. Dominguez, now recovering in a Houston hospital, has been charged wit attempted kidnapping, according to police. But they have not charged Tsang. " I don’t think you’d find a jury in Texas that would convict her, so why try?" says Houston homicide Sgt. Doug Bacon.
The prospect of more victims arming themselves is no comfort to law-enforcement officials. Yet most admit there is very little they can do in the face of a persistent stalker. " You can put a person in jail for a year or so, but they eventually will get out," says Dep. John Lane, part of a four-member anti-stalking unit established by the Los Angeles police after Schaeffer’s murder. Even so, the new laws do give police one more weapon to employ against stalkers and if they deter even a small percentage of crimes, that’s better than none.
California Colorado Connecticut Delaware Florida Hawaii Idaho Iowa Kentucky Massachusetts Mississippi Nebraska Oklahoma South Carolina South Dakota Tennessee Utah Virginia Washington West Virginia Wisconsin (SOURCE: NATIONAL CONFERENCE OF STATE LEGISLATURES)
