Scholarship Saturday: New tools to bring domestic abusers in the military to justice
By Isaac Kennen
Scholarship Editor
www.caaflog.org
The 2019 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) became law
on August 13, 2018 and has two
provisions that are particularly important for dealing with domestic
abuse incidents in the military – from January 1, 2019, on.
First, Congress has amended Article 128 of the Uniform Code of
Military Justice (UCMJ), to expressly state that the acts of strangulation or
suffocation constitute aggravated assaults.
Second, a new enumerated offense entitled “Art. 128b. Domestic
Violence” has been created.
This new crime punishes a broad range of misconduct.
Committing a violent offense (or violating a protective order
with the intent to commit a violent offense) against a protected person is, of
course, punishable under the new Article 128b. But, so are non-violent
offenses (including, expressly, violating protective orders or harming animals)
when they are committed with the intent to intimidate or threaten a protected
person.
These important legislative changes are not (yet) reflected in
Part IV of the most current version of the Manual
for Courts-Martial (MCM) published by the Joint Service Committee.
Accordingly, we do not yet have approved elements for use at
trial, and no declared maximum punishment. Practitioners will have to
seek guidance elsewhere.
Such a practitioner might find help in an article by
Captain Kaley S. Chan entitled “Getting
a Grip on Strangulation,” published in the September/October 2018
edition of The Army Lawyer.
Captain Chan spends much of her time in her
article recommending the creation of just the sort of legislation
enacted in the 2019 NDAA. So, a reader might be tempted to find her
work obsolete.
But, her discussion of what sort of conduct constitutes
“strangulation and suffocation” is still useful – particularly because the
MCM does not yet address this new law, and the statute itself offers
no definitions for those terms. Captain Chan’s article even offers some
proposed jury instructions.
- Originally published on January 19, 2019
on www.caaflog.com. Preserved
by archive.org, here. In the CAAFLog archive, without attribution, here.