Military jurisdiction and the rights of victims

Overturning a decision of the Court of Appeals, the Supreme Court of Chile has held that allegations of torture by police must be investigated by the civilian rather than military courts on the ground that civilian courts confer greater rights on both victims and defendants.

To an American reader, the court's reliance on the rights of victims brings to mind one of the arguments advanced in the Solorio case by the then U.S. Court of Military Appeals. United States v. Solorio, 21 M.J. 251 (C.M.A. 1986), aff'd on other grounds, 483 U.S. 435 (1987). In that case, the court repudiated precedents that the victim's status as military dependents was not sufficient to find an offense service connected and hence within the military's subject-matter jurisdiction, noting that there had been a trend in the U.S. towards greater recognition of victims' interests. Thus, in the U.S., victims' rights were a basis for expanding court-martial jurisdiction (until 1987, when the Supreme Court decided that no service connection was necessary beyond the accused's military status), while in Chile victims' rights are now a basis for restricting court-martial jurisdiction.