With all the wonder a new year brings, one can’t help but look back at the old year if only to say thank goodness it’s over. Although many residents in the community struggled with inflation, world turmoil and the ongoing effects of the pandemic, there were, to be sure, a few positive moments to chew on.
I am Vanessa Guillén Act Praised as Calls for Removing COs from Sexual Assault Prosecutions Mount
Lt. Gen. Pat White greets Congresswoman Jackie Speier, the representative to California s 14th District, at the start of congressional delegation visit at Fort Hood, Texas, May 5, 2021. (U.S. Army/Sgt. Evan Ruchotzke)
25 May 2021 Medill News Service | By Karli Goldenberg
Less than a month after the anniversary of 20-year-old Army Spc. Vanessa Guillén s disappearance, Reps. Jackie Speier, D-Calif., and Markwayne Mullin, R-Okla., reintroduced the I Am Vanessa Guillén Act on May 13, reigniting calls to take prosecution authority away from military commanders.
The legislation proposes sweeping changes to the military s policies surrounding missing service members and reports of sexual harrassment and sexual assault. The act would make sexual harassment a crime under the Uniform Code of Military Justice and
Despite Pentagon officials acknowledging the need to reform military justice, vocal defenders still persist that prosecution authority must remain in the hands of commanders, not prosecutors.
Curry v. Secretary of the Army did not say that commanders must retain the authority to prosecute servicemembers. Instead,
Curry says that Congress has the power under the rules clause of the Constitution to decide who prosecutes courts martial, not the courts. Thus, the
Curry court leaves it to Congress in a well-recognized act of judicial deference. If, as proposed, the Senate bill removes the commander from making prosecution decisions, the federal courts will defer to Congress with challenges to that structural change.
More troubling is the misapplication of the Supreme Court’s
Solorio v. United States decision by suggesting that the court somehow requires commanders to decide to prosecute at court-martial. And, they allude to unspecified difficulties in prosecuting cases something irrelevant to who decides to prosecute. In 1987, the services successfully prosecuted 8,600 general and special courts martial. Did some challenge the service-connection for their prosecutio