St. Louis Post-Dispatch: McCaskill on Meet the Press: No ‘coddling’ Pentagon on sexual assaults
St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports:
Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., argued this morning on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that stripping commanders of key decisions about court martials would backfire.
“If the commander doesn’t have any role, we’re letting them off the hook. And we can not let these commanders off the hook; we have to hold them accountable,” McCaskill said.
McCaskill, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, is a principal author of reforms protecting victims that were accepted by the committee before advancing the legislation to the floor.
For instance, a decision by a commander not to pursue charges in an assault case would be reviewed at the highest levels in the service branches.
But a rival plan of Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., gathering momentum would put decisions on court martials in the hands of prosecutors rather than commanders in an effort to stem retaliation against victims.
