Law School Defends Human Rights

In what could be a landmark case for the prosecution of domestic human rights violations, Columbia Law School affiliates are working with the American Civil Liberties Union to bring what Jessica Lenahan calls “justice for my children’s deaths,” after eight years of waiting.

According to a press release from the law school, representatives of the school’s Human Rights Clinic filed the addendum brief on behalf of Lenahan, formerly Jessica Gonzales, before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights Tuesday. The case “marks the first time an individual complaint by a victim of domestic violence has been brought against the United States for international human rights violations,” according to the release.

The basis of the case, known as Jessica Ruth Gonzales v. United States of America, is the murder of Lenahan’s three daughters, who were killed by her estranged husband after Colorado police repeatedly refused to enforce a restraining order against her husband.

In 1999, Lenahan sued the police of Castle Rock, Colo. for failing to act after she asked for help in protecting her children from her estranged husband, in spite of her restraining order against him. But in June 2005, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the Constitution did not endow Lenahan with the rights necessary for police enforcement of the restraining order.

After the ruling, Lenahan and her lawyers filed the Inter-American Commission petition, which aimed to sue the U.S. for human rights violations. The original 2005 complaint before the commission argued that not enforcing the restraining order robbed Lenahan and her daughters of their human rights.

Tuesday’s brief from Columbia adds to the human rights argument that, under the American Declaration on the Rights and Duties of Man, the government was required to fully investigate the danger presented by Lenahan’s estranged husband—a requirement, the brief claims, which was not fulfilled.

“Jessica Lenahan was forced to turn to an international body because the U.S. legal system failed to provide her with even a bare modicum of justice,” Araceli Martínez-Olguin, an attorney with the ACLU Women’s Rights Project, said in the release. “We hope that this action will ensure that other domestic violence survivors in this country and all of the Americas have legal recourse when their human rights are violated by their governments.

“We are now headed toward the final stage in a long process that will ultimately lay bare the grave violations of Jessica Gonzales’ rights,” Columbia Law School postdoctoral scholar Caroline Bettinger-López said in the release.

“Finally, I have hope that an official body will say that what happened was wrong,” Lenahan said in the press release.

Other Columbia affiliates from the Human Rights Clinic uniting to represent Lenahan include law professor Peter Rosenblum and students Rachel Barish, Elizabeth Howell, Crystal Lopez, Helen Ronen, Fabrice Van Michel, and Jacqui Zalcberg.

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