Abstract
Victims and justice are inter-twined. There is no need for justice without victims and there is no justice without the consideration for victims and their rights. The criminal justice system in the United States has detached itself from victims and even after the Victims' Rights Movement in the 1960s, consideration for victims is often nonoperational. The use of State appeals cases as the unit of observation provides a unique insight into the concluding stages of the court process. They provide original case facts as well as discussions of errors in of the trial court actors. The methodology of content analysis allows an exploration of the roles victims play and the justice they are or are not receiving at the end stages in the court process. Overall, the cases analyzed illustrated that justice was present in the decisions and actions of the appeals courts in most of the points of analysis. Victims were directly incorporated into their decisions and explanations. The appeals courts used all power in their means to maintain the convictions of those who had perpetrated a victimization against another. Conversely, the facts of the original victimizations and trial proceedings showed, that the trial courts continuously failed to maintain a victim focus.