Military Rape Cases Have No Statute of Limitations, Supreme Court Decides
In an 8-0 opinion issued Thursday, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that military personnel accused of a rape between 1986 and 2006 a period previously subject to a five-year statute of limitations can be charged for the crime.
At issue in U.S. v. Briggs is a decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces, or CAAF, to overturn three rape convictions that occurred within that 20-year period.
Prior to 1996, the UCMJ held that rape was a crime punishable by death and therefore had no time limit for prosecuting the crime. A 1998 CAAF ruling established the five-year time limit, which remained in place until Congress moved to abolish it in 2006.
In the new opinion, authored by Justice Samuel Alito, the justices said the Uniform Code of Military Justice favored the government’s interpretation that military rape cases are “punishable by death” and therefore, carry no statute of limitations regardless of when the crime occurred.
The justices also agreed with government’s argument that rape is a particularly damaging crime in the military context because it disrupts good order and discipline.
“Among other things, the government argues that a rape committed by a service member may cause special damage by critically undermining unit cohesion and discipline and that, in some circumstances, the crime may have serious international implications. That also appears to have been the view of Congress and the executive,” Alito wrote.
Attorneys for Air Force Lt. Col. Michael Briggs, convicted in 2014 of raping another service member in 2005, had argued that the statute of limitations did not exist when Briggs committed the crime. That defense was based on a 1977 Supreme Court ruling that eliminated the death penalty for rape cases in the U.S.; CAAF’s 1998 decision and a February 2018 case; U.S. v. Mangahas, in which the military appeals court ruled that the death penalty for rape cases was a violation of the UCMJ’s prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment.
Briggs’s conviction, as well as others, came after the law was changed to get rid of the five-year prosecution time limit.
But in Mangahas, decided in February 2018, the military appeals court affirmed the statute of limitations for cases that occurred in the 20-year legal gray area.
https://www.military.com/daily-news/2020/12/10/military-rape-cases-have-no-statute-of-limitations-supreme-court-decides.html