Political Quotes

“As you heard from the chairman of the committee, he only intends on taking one crime out of the chain of command, and that is sexual assault. And the reason why that is so problematic is, No. 1, it will continue to undermine women in the military, marginalize them and isolate them, creating a ``pink court'' that all legal experts have agreed would be highly ineffective and would harm the military justice system. Second, our allies have already made this move. They have taken all serious crimes out of the chain of command and given it to trained military prosecutors in the UK, Israel, Germany, Netherlands, and Australia. In those instances, they did it specifically for defendants' rights. And we have a similar problem in this country because right now we have a great deal of racial bias in who gets punished. If you are Black or Brown in the U.S. military today, you are 2.5 times more likely to be punished. And most commanders are White commanders. There is further data that shows most Black and Brown servicemembers have either experienced or witnessed racism within the ranks. If we want to fix this criminal justice system, you need a bright line, and it should be at all serious crimes. That is how we fix the military justice system. That is how we give justice to sexual assault survivors. And for the chairman to say today that it would cost too much money or that they don't have sufficient resources or sufficient lawyers, it isn't true.…”