Unanimous Consent Request--S. 1520

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. REED. Madam President.

Mr. REED. Madam President, once again, I object to the request from
the Senator from New York for the reasons I have previously stated, and
I will repeat again what I have said publicly and what I have committed
to.

I support removing prosecution of sexual assault, the types of crimes that Senator Gillibrand discussed, from the chain of command. But her bill goes further to include crimes not related to sexual assault. The removal of sexual assault crimes from the chain of command will be an historic change in the military justice system and one which Senator Gillibrand can claim great responsibility for effecting. We must take care, however, that we do it thoughtfully, in a manner that does not break the military justice system.

The worst thing we can do to victims of sexual assault is to move a bill through that can't be implemented effectively or on time, creates too large a workload for too few qualified military judge advocates, imperils prosecutions, leads to convictions being overturned on appeal, or results in neglected cases because the necessary attention cannot be devoted to them.

According to the Department of Defense, the number of full-time colonels, lawyer disposition authorities required to execute the system as proposed, which would take effect 180 days from enactment, exceeds the number of judge advocates in that senior grade. And this doesn't account for her bill's requirement that these O-6 judge advocates have significant trial and criminal law experience or that they would not then be available for other important assignments reserved for O-6s, such as military judges and division, corps, or combatant command judge advocates.

The heads of the service Judge Advocate General's Corps have previously raised concerns about the implementation timeline, the resources necessary to execute, and a host of other inconsistencies with the current system that would have to be addressed to be sure of successful implementation. These are the very military lawyers that Senator Gillibrand's bill would empower to make prosecutorial decisions, which includes an evaluation of a far greater number of cases than simply those that end up in court-martial. These are the issues that we need discuss in the committee and not dispose of in an amendment on the floor. The committee will do this and do it faithfully. And I am very confident that we will be able to move legislation that does remove any crimes related to sexual misconduct from the current command to a system that Senator Gillibrand is proposing.

With that, I would reiterate my objection.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source