This story out of Ft. Bragg concerns charges that an Army captain beat up and sexually assaulted his Army officer wife in their off-base home. The Hartnett County District Attorney investigated and decided not to prosecute for lack of evidence and the wife's failure to cooperate. According to the accused husband:
There is no doubt in my mind...that regardless of what the facts of the case show, the incredible amount of pressure being placed onto the military's top brass from Congress and also the media, to prosecute all claims of sexual assault have made it impossible for senior leadership to dismiss any case regardless of the facts.
Should the off-base charges be tried in a court-martial?
Eliminating the volatile nature of the allegations in the current "atmosphere" for a moment, two points seem important. First, the purported "victim" is another Army officer, and that would no doubt (without more) satisfy the Relford requirements for exercising military jurisdiction. However, the fact that the complainant is the suspect's wife, who for whatever reasons has declined to cooperate, does the military really need to intrude into the personal affairs of a married couple who both happen to be active duty officers? Hard to gauge because if she were injured and received medical treatment from the military, then there's an identifiable "loss" to the government. If it was a mere familial squabble and the police were called, the combination of de minimis and command discretion might (and imho should) reject criminal prosecution. Not to say that an old-fashioned butt-chewing isn't called for, but resources for courts-martial are just a precious to a command as is aviation fuel for a fighter wing. Money shouldn't be the tail wagging the dog, but it should factor into the "common sense" aspect of command discretion.
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