Transparency and comparability in case dispositions

Protect Our Defenders and the Connecticut Veterans Legal Center, represented by Yale Law School's Veterans Legal Services Clinic, have filed a Freedom of Information Act suit in federal district court in Connecticut, seeking military and Justice Department records relating to  sex offense prosecutions of military personnel. Stars and Stripes has the story here, with a link to the complaint. Excerpt from the article:

Of particular interest to the advocacy groups are the differences in punishment for service members by military and civilian prosecutions given the different protocols that exist between the two. For decades, military commanders had almost absolute authority over prosecutions in dealing with major crimes. That was changed by the Uniform Code of Military Justice when it was passed by Congress and took effect in the 1950s. But while the UCMJ has brought some improvements, advocates say it was only a first step forward.

When Congress passed the National Defense Authorization Act for 2022, which sets policy and spending priorities for the Pentagon, it contained further reforms that removed military commanders from the decision-making process for certain crimes, including sexual assault and murder. Originally, the proposal sought to remove commanders from decisions involving all criminal prosecutions, but opposition from Republicans in Congress led to a compromise that applied to only certain crimes.

Under the change in the NDAA, decisions about whether to prosecute about a dozen specific crimes shifted from military commanders to independent special trial prosecutors.

“Historically, military commanders wielded nearly unfettered disciplinary authority over the soldiers in their command. In a standard court-martial under the pre-UCMJ military code, commanders wielded the charging authority of a prosecutor, the investigative authorities of a police officer, the presiding authority of a trial judge and the review authority of an appellate judge,” the lawsuit states.

“This concentration of power in commanders led to tremendous disparities in how justice was meted out, especially during wartime. During World War II, the United States conducted over 1 million courts-martial, impacting nearly a 10th of the force. Of those courts-martial, over 140 resulted in the death penalty, with Black soldiers disproportionately represented among those numbers,” the suit states.