Houston Chronicle: Military sexual assault legislation divides Democrats
Houston Chronicle reports:
The dispute between two Democratic members of the Senate Armed Services Committee heated up Thursday when Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., said an amendment to military sexual assault legislation authored by Sen.Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., was a “recipe for disaster.”
Gillibrand’s amendment would remove military commanders from the process of prosecuting sexual misconduct cases. Instead, independent military lawyers would determine whether to bring charges of misconduct. Her proposal is an effort to protect victims from retaliation by the chain of command.
McCaskill told reporters that inserting independent military prosecutors into the decision-making process wasn’t wise because they might refuse to take on difficult cases to protect their own “won-loss record.”
