Political Quotes

“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.…”