For more information see www.justicewomen.com and www.purpleberets.org.

To read this article in Spanish, click here.

Attend the Trial!

The Trial of Teresa Macias vs. Sonoma County Sheriff Begins Monday June 17 and runs for 3 to 4 weeks, 8:30 am to 3:30 pm, Monday through Thursday, San Francisco Federal Bldg, 17th Floor, Courtroom #4, 450 Golden Gate at Polk Street.

The federal civil rights case of Macias vs. Sonoma County Sheriff is poised over a question of life and death importance to women. The question is this. Can police ignore women’s pleas for help with domestic violence whenever they wish and with impunity? Or can women hold police legally accountable when police refuse to act?

Until the Macias case, U.S. Courts have repeatedly held that police have no obligation to act. Thus police in the United States have absolute discretion to ignore rape and domestic violence victims whenever they please, no matter how much evidence exists that a crime has occurred. And women have no means to hold police accountable. This current state of unrestricted police discretion, combined with the extreme male biases of so many police, systematically leaves women abandoned to the rampant violence against them.

During the last year and a half of her life, Maria Teresa Macias, a Sonoma County mother of three children, went to the Sonoma County Sheriff for help on more than 22 occasions seeking protection from her physically and sexually violent husband, Avelino. The Sheriff’s Department rebuffed Teresa at every turn, until finally, on April 15, 1996, Avelino shot and killed Teresa.

In October 1996, the Macias family filed a $15 million federal civil rights lawsuit against Sonoma County Sheriff’s Department. The suit claims that Sonoma County Sheriff denied Teresa’s 14th Amendment constitutional right to equal protection of the laws.

As with previous such lawsuits by women, Teresa’s case was thrown out of court. But the Macias family appealed. In July 2000, ruling on the Macias case, the 9th Circuit Federal Court of Appeals, in the most unambiguous language to date, unanimously declared women’s constitutional right to non-discriminatory police protection. And with this ruling the Appeals Court revived the Macias case in federal court. Since then, the case has received increasing national attention as a landmark case carving out a previously unavailable legal remedy by which victims of violence against women can hold police accountable when equal protection is denied by police. The trial begins on June 17 at the San Francisco Federal Court Building.

For Macias case history and documents see www.justicewomen.com and www.purpleberets.org.

Marie De Santis
Women’s Justice Center
El Centro de Justicia para Mujeres
250 Sebastopol Rd.
Santa Rosa, CA 95407
www.justicewomen.com - Bilingual (Spanish) web site
E-mail: rdjustice@monitor.net

Back to top