Unanimous Consent Request--S. 1520

Floor Speech

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Mrs. GILLIBRAND. Mr. President.

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Mrs. GILLIBRAND. First of all, our bill is entitled ``Military Justice Improvement and Increasing Prevention Act,'' so, as the chairman has requested, there is a great deal of prevention in this bill. And I dare say, if the chairman was going to include all of the recommendations of the IRC, we would have a very strong base bill on which to work from, but I do not have the sense that that will be done. In fact, I do not have the sense that all the recommendations are being considered, so I intend to offer an amendment that encompasses all of the recommendations.

Second, the reason why murder and other serious crimes must be included is because there are two challenges within the military: One, sexual assault cases are not handled properly, and unfortunately too few go to trial and too few end in conviction. The rate of going to trial and the rate of conviction has gone down.

The second reason is, if you only allow sexual assault cases to have a proper review, you will further marginalize survivors of sexual assault, who, more often than not, are women who report those cases, because receiving special treatment and a special legal system will not create fairness within the military for them.

Third, there is enormous evidence in the last 3 years of considerable racial bias against Black and Brown servicemembers. In the marines, if you are a Black man, you are up to 2.6 times more likely to be punished. That is a serious problem, and this is an issue that has been investigated for a long time.

So I believe that the bright line of felonies, as our allies have already done in the UK, Israel, Canada, Netherlands, Germany, and Australia, is meaningful because they did it for defendants' rights, they did it to professionalize their military justice system, and they did it to protect all servicemembers. Servicemembers in the U.S. military deserve nothing less.
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