Unanimous Consent Request--S. 1520
Floor Speech
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Mrs. GILLIBRAND. Mr. President, I rise again today to call for every Senator to have the opportunity to cast their vote on the Military Justice Improvement and Increasing Prevention Act.
It is time for us to look at this issue to move serious crimes like sexual assault and murder out of the chain of command and put them in the hands of well-trained military prosecutors who are independent, impartial, and highly trained uniformed prosecutors.
This is an issue that deserves urgency. I began calling for this full floor vote on May 24. Since then, it is an estimate that 2,912 servicemembers will have been raped or sexually assaulted during that time; more will have been victims of other serious crimes. Many will not even report these crimes because they have no faith in the current system, where decisions about whether to prosecute are made by commanders and not trained lawyers. And yet this vote continues to be delayed and denied, week after week.
While I am glad to see that more of our colleagues have acknowledged that we must move sexual assault out of the chain of command, it is not enough. It doesn't address the fundamental flaw in the military justice system, which is that it asks commanders to act as judge and jury in highly complex crimes that they are not trained to do.
In fact, the training commanders get includes just a few hours, at the most, on legal topics like military justice and unlawful command influence. No one could be expected to learn in a few hours what it takes lawyers years of study and decades of experience to master.
That is why this bill would move serious crimes to the purview of those lawyers who have had the time to properly prepare for the job.
Today, I would like to outline exactly which crimes this bill would move out of the chain of command. Opponents have tried to misrepresent these crimes the bill addresses. It does not, for example, deal with larceny under $1,000 or destruction of government property. Those crimes would stay with the commander.
The bill includes a finite list of crimes. I will read them all now: recruit maltreatment, nonconsensual distribution of visual images, murder, manslaughter, murder of a pregnant mother, child endangerment, sexual assault, obscene mailing, sexual assault of a child, voyeurism, major financial crimes, major fraud, robbery, bribery, graft, kidnapping, arson, extortion, aggravated sexual assault, maiming, domestic violence, stalking, perjury, obstruction of justice, and retaliation.
That is it. That is the list. Those are crimes that have punishment of more than 1 year associated with them.
I ask those who oppose this reform to tell me why they would expect a commander with as little as a few hours of training to be prepared to try cases on obscene mailing or to be well versed on the elements of extortion. Tell me about the commander who understands the intricacies of using false documents to claim benefits or has the time to investigate complex financial frauds. Tell me about what leaves our commanders prepared to act as judge and jury in a murder trial or a kidnapping case.
Our bill simply recognizes that these are serious crimes that require legal expertise to properly review and prosecute. By moving these crimes to independent military lawyers, this reform allows commanders to focus on what they are trained to do: preparing our troops to fight and win our Nation's wars.
Additionally, the chairman has said that this bill would remove from the chain of command ``crimes that have been handled by the military chain of command effectively for years and years and years.''
But, actually, that is not the case. They haven't been handled effectively.
Just this week the Military Times reported on the case of Private Jonathan Lauture, who is alleged to have shot and killed Jason Lindsay in June 2019, when Lindsay entered Lauture's home in an attempt to intervene in a situation of domestic violence.
His chain of command at Fort Bliss was aware of the killing, but they did not inform the Army's criminal investigation division. Instead, they quickly reassigned him to Fort Stewart, where he continued to assault his wife.
The Military Times reports:
Army investigators had no idea that the shooting had even occurred, much less the domestic violence. . . . Lauture's Fort Bliss chain of command did not inform the CID of the shooting. Nobody did, until a domestic violence investigation in December 2019 by Fort Stewart CID incidentally learned that Lauture had [allegedly] killed a man who was attempting to rescue his wife.
That is how the current system handles alleged murder and domestic violence. It is not only ineffective, it is actively concealing information and hampering justice. That is why the current system is unacceptable.
We have to reform the system. The Military Justice Improvement and Increasing Prevention Act is supported by experts, by servicemembers, and by a bipartisan filibuster-proof majority of Senators if we bring it to the floor.
1520 and the Senate proceed to its consideration; that there be 2 hours for debate, equally divided in the usual form; that upon the use or yielding back of that time, the Senate vote on the bill with no intervening action or debate.
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