Imagine this: Police officers arrive at a crime scene and find one man holding a knife, another cut and bloody. One officer marches over to the man with the knife, places him under arrest and reads his "Miranda" rights: You have the right to remain silent, you have the right to an attorney and so on. Meanwhile, another officer heads over to the bleeding man and reads him his rights, too: "As the victim of a violent crime, you have the right to attend all public proceedings, to be heard before sentencing, and to be notified of your offender's release or escape from incarceration."

If the supporters of a Victims' Rights Amendment succeed, look for a rash of new scenes like this on television crime shows. After several fitful starts, the proposed constitutional amendment is gaining momentum in Congress. Supporters insist that a change to the criminal justice system is needed to put victims on equal footing with defendants. Click here for Text of Victims' Rights Amendment.

The amendment easily passed its first hurdle, the Senate Judiciary Committee, on Sept. 30 in a vote of 12 to 5. The full Senate must still vote on the proposal, as well as the House of Representatives. If passed, the amendment would then have to be approved by a majority of states. It's a daunting task. In 212 years, the Constitution has been amended only 27 times. Several recent failures include the Equal Rights Amendment and an amendment against flag desecration.

Co-sponsors of the Senate measure, Sens. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., and Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., are joined by a number of politicians supporting the amendment, including President Bill Clinton, Vice President Al Gore, the National Governors' Association, and several powerful victim groups such as Mothers Against Drunk Driving. (Click here for a profile of MADD president Karolyn Nunnallee.)

Thirty-two states have already made provisions for victims' rights, either through state legislation or amendments to their state constitutions. But supporters insist a national amendment is still necessary. "It hasn't produced the kind of transformation that is needed," says professor Paul Cassells of the University of Utah, a leading legal voice for a Victims' Rights Amendment. "When you are trying to change the process on a day-to-day level down on Main Street, you need a very potent weapon and the Victims' Rights Amendment is it." Cassells has also crusaded against Miranda rights for years, and will soon argue for their abolition before the Supreme Court.

But uniting against this measure is a bevy of lawyers who might ordinarily scowl at each other from opposite sides of the courtroom, including criminal defense attorneys, a prosecutor in the Oklahoma bombing case, the American Civil Liberties Union, a Reagan administration lawyer, battered women, 450 law professors, and the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.

These detractors urge that enshrining victims' rights in the Constitution will damage the justice system, bend constitutional rights in an unhealthy way, and do little to help victims. It arrives at the public doorstep, they say, only because politicians are afraid to appear heartless toward victims. Many also say they are troubled by practical problems the amendment raises, beginning with the basic and seemingly obvious questions: Who is the victim? And is the person arrested really guilty?

In real life, criminal cases can be messy. Take the knife scenario. Imagine the real aggressor is not the man with the knife -- that the real aggressor has fled, or moments earlier the bleeding man had started the fight with a knife he tossed away. "The presupposition is that someone is a victim before a judgment of guilt or innocence," says William B. Moffitt, president of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers. "They may be victims ... They may not be victims... . The process is designed to determine if there is a victim."

Battered women's organizations also raise concerns. Abused women are victims who sometimes -- after years of suffering -- strike back. What will happen in these "Burning Bed" scenarios? Does an abuser who terrorized a battered woman get a new constitutional status as a victim? Would a battered woman be constitutionally obligated to provide restitution to him? "We absolutely think victims need support," says Sue Ostoff, director of the National Clearinghouse for the Defense of Battered Women, "but this has real and devastating consequences."

Troubling situations arise in other cases as well. Rachel King of the ACLU conducted research on dozens of death penalty cases, interviewing victims' families. Family members often changed their minds from the beginning of the process to the end. "People are not in a rational state, and why should they be?" says King. She points to the case of Karla Fay Tucker, a convicted murderer who was executed in Texas. The husband of the murder victim vehemently sought the death penalty. But the victim's brother opposed it with equal passion. "What's a prosecutor to do? It's interjecting emotionalism," says King.

And then there is the banner case -- the Oklahoma City bombing, with 168 people killed and many more injured. Professor Cassells describes the travail of victims, forced by the trial judge to choose between listening to testimony or delivering a statement after the trial. Victims, joined by prosecutors, appealed. They lost, but then Congress took the unusual step of immediately passing legislation to boost their rights -- and those of victims in all federal cases -- to watch and give a statement.

But in a surprising turn, Beth Wilkinson, a lead government lawyer prosecuting Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols in the Oklahoma case, has stepped forward to object to the proposed Victims' Rights Amendment. Wilkinson says the most important victim right is "the fair and just conviction of the guilty." She believes the Oklahoma prosecution would have been damaged by the Victims' Rights Amendment, especially if the victims had been granted the right to also second-guess the prosecution's decision to enter into a plea with Michael Fortier in exchange for testimony. "If the victims had had a constitutional right to address the court at the time of the plea, I have no doubt that many would have vigorously and emotionally opposed any plea bargain. The entire case would have been threatened."

"All of that is rank speculation," says Steven J. Twist, a Phoenix attorney who is on the executive board of National Victims' Constitutional Amendment Network. "The nightmare of horribles has never happened. My point is, sooner or later, it is inevitable. It's not complicated and it works."

The amendment as written fails to answer many questions. Will victims be entitled to lawyers, and who will pay for them? How will victims enforce their rights? What happens when the defendant's and victim's rights clash, for example, when the defendant's entitlement to a fair trial butts against the victim's demand for speed?

One certain consequence, opponents say, will be to inject uncertainty into the criminal justice system. "An amendment will undermine the traditional distinction between criminal and civil law. The victim is served by a separate civil system, as in the O.J. Simpson case," says Roger Pilon, of the Cato Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank. "The people are served by criminal law."

If adjustments for victims are needed, legislation is more appropriate than tinkering with the nation's fundamental charter, opponents say. "States are very responsive to victims. Victims are not an ... impotent group," says Bruce Fein, a former associate deputy attorney general in the Reagan administration.

In a rare expression of public opinion, Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist also voiced his concerns about the proposed amendment. In a 1997 letter, Rehnquist wrote that the Judicial Conference, which he heads, "has recently taken a position in favor of making provision for victims' rights by statute, rather than by a constitutional amendment." In this way, the Chief Justice writes, mistakes can "be amended by a simple act of Congress." A letter from 450 law professors concurs, warning Congress that an amendment is "unnecessary and dangerous."

According to Sen. Kyl, the Victims' Rights Amendment will be presented to the full Senate floor in the next session, before the election. To become the Constitution's 28th Amendment, the measure must pass Congress with a two-thirds super-majority, and then be ratified by three-quarters of the states. Most proposed amendments fail. Some pass quickly. Amendment 26, which lowered the voting age to 18, was rapidly ratified in one year, 1971, during the draft days of the Vietnam War. Others take time. Amendment 27, which the first Congress introduced to prevent its members from raising their pay without an intervening election, was finally added in 1992. Ratification took 203 years.