Critics Fail To Strip Military Commanders of their Prosecution Power Over Sex Crimes

Commanders will be allowed to keep their authority:

In a dramatic hearing Wednesday focused on sexual assault in the military, the Senate Armed Services Committee knocked down an effort to strip military commanders of oversight in the prosecution of serious crimes by their subordinates.

The 17-9 committee vote to leave prosecutions within the chain of command cut across party lines, and represented a victory for the Pentagon. Leaders including Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel and each of the service chiefs have argued that military commanders are best able stem a tide of sexual assaults that Defense Department statistics indicate has been rising in recent years.

But a senator who voted to maintain the status quo, Maine independent Sen. Angus King, warned that legislators would have little choice but to reduce the authority of commanders in criminal cases if the Pentagon doesn’t quickly reverse the trend.

“In a sense, I see this as a last chance for the chain of command to get it right,” King said.  [Stars & Stripes]

You can read much more at the link, but I respectfully disagree with Senator King’s statement.  As I have already shown the statistics for military sexual assaults last year were inflated due to adding assaults from prior years to the 2012 statistics along with other reasons such as an increase in baseless claims.  The military has made a big effort in recent years to get people to report sexual assaults and her statement runs counter to this.  So instead of trying to count every report there is, the military for the 2013 statistics can show improvement by just recalculating their statistics.  They can do this by just including reports from 2013 and reports from prior years would be counted to the year’s that they happened.  This would show instant progress and not bring attention to reports people filed from prior years.

Something that has changed is this:

Levin’s amendment would set up an appeals system that would give service secretaries the final say on commanders’ prosecution decisions, and makes it a crime to retaliate against those who report sexual assault.

Gillibrand said the time to let the military solve its own sexual assault problem had passed.

“The chain of command has told us for decades that they would solve this problem, and they have failed,” she said.

Gillibrand argued that the amendment does not address the main problem — a climate of fear faced by sexual assault victims when considering whether to report a crime to a commander who may be biased in favor of a higher-ranking perpetrator.

I do not have a problem with Levin’s amendment though I would like to see how retaliate is defined.  For example if someone files a report that is considered baseless can they not be prosecuted for filing a false report?  As far Congresswoman Gillibrand’s complaint it runs counter to the facts that show commanders are overwhelming prosecuting servicemembers under their command for sexual assault even when the evidence does not support a prosecution.  There are servicemembers that had to be released from jail by the US Court of Appeals due to having their Constitutional rights to a fair trial trampled on by the witch hunt against anyone accused of sexual assault.  In the article even Congresswoman McCaskill had to cede this point.  Anyway this issue is not over, expect the special interests to try and bring it up again next year, but hopefully the Pentagon gets their act together on how they compile the statistics so they do not give the special interests ammunition to bash them with.