Contractors Squirm Under Soldiers’ Justice?

The Boston Globe and Defense News have picked up on Peter Singer’s scoop — that mil­i­tary con­trac­tors are now going to be sub­ject to sol­diers’ jus­tice.
Neither the Globe nor Defense News could find any big defense con­trac­tor to com­ment on the five-​​word change to the law, spear­headed by Senator Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican and for­mer JAG. But they’ve caught the legal and pri­vate mil­i­tary inter­est groups squirm­ing.
Stan Soloway, pres­i­dent of the Professional Services Council, an orga­ni­za­tion that rep­re­sents gov­ern­ment con­trac­tors, tells Defense News that “one result [of the rule change] may be that con­trac­tors now can be pun­ished for actions not ordi­nar­ily pros­e­cutable under U.S. law.”

The UCMJs “behav­ioral require­ments are very dif­fer­ent and poten­tially in con­flict with con­tract law and crim­i­nal law,” Soloway said…
Civilian con­trac­tors now might be pun­ished for dis­re­spect­ing an offi­cer, dis­re­gard­ing an order or com­mit­ting adul­tery actions that are not pros­e­cutable under U.S. law, Soloway said.
“If a gen­eral or colonel directs a con­trac­tor or gov­ern­ment civil­ian to do some­thing that is out­side terms of con­tract, under U.S. pro­cure­ment law, the con­trac­tor does not do it with­out author­ity from the con­tract­ing offi­cer,” Soloway said. But under the UCMJ, “that might be fail­ure to fol­low an order.”

“I think there should have been some kind of hear­ing before Congress passed this mea­sure,” Eugene R. Fidell, pres­i­dent of the National Institute of Military Justice, tells the Globe.

“Ultimately, if this power is used, it will cre­ate a sub­stan­tial issue that would likely reach the Supreme Court, and it will put us at odds with con­tem­po­rary inter­na­tional stan­dards.“
Fidell said that US courts have a his­tory of throw­ing out con­vic­tions of civil­ians who were tried in mil­i­tary courts, includ­ing the 1957 case of a wife who killed her hus­band on a mil­i­tary base.
“There was a period of decades that you could have crimes by US per­sons over­seas that could never be pun­ished,” he said.

Hopefully, that will start to change.

January 8th, 2007 | Eat DT's Dust, Mercs, War Update | 33497 Comments »http://defensetech.org/2007/01/08/contractors-squirm-under-soldiers-justice/Contractors+Squirm+Under+Soldiers%27+Justice%3F2007-01-08+16%3A05%3A19hambling You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.