This article focuses on forty oral Victim Impact Statements (VIS) presented during the public sentencing hearing of an offender convicted of murdering forty-eight women over the course of twenty years. We argue that the VIS in this case illustrate the increasingly complex and public nature of victim testimony in the formal U.S. criminal justice system. Through the use of grounded theory analysis, we highlight critical issues regarding the communicative function and emotional intensity of victim impact testimony as victims address the court, the offender, and the community through their statements. This case study extends Roberts and Erez's (2004) communication model of VIS and offers several practice and policy recommendations for the use of VIS in non-capital criminal cases.
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