Washington Post: Break the chain of command on military sex assault cases
Ruth Marcus of the Washington Post writes:
Brig. Gen. Jeffrey Sinclair is a cad, a bully and a boor. Once a rising star in the Army and the former deputy commander of U.S. forces in southern Afghanistan, Sinclair betrayed his wife, mistreated a mistress who was also his subordinate and solicited nude photographs from other junior officers.
He is also Exhibit A for why military law governing sexual assault prosecutions should be changed to take such cases outside the regular chain of command.
Normally, and in many cases accurately, the critique of the current military justice system is that it fails to take victims’ complaints seriously enough. Commanding officers invested with the power to decide whether to pursue prosecutions may be inclined to sweep their buddies’ wrongdoing under the rug, to view victims as culpable or to weigh the non-judicial desire to avoid losing a valued fighter.
But the spectacularly fizzled Sinclair prosecution illustrates the competing risk of non-lawyer commanding officers overreaching, fearful of appearing soft on sex crimes and the ensuing political fallout.
