Similar prohibitions cover relationships between instructors and
students (paragraph 10), and those between students and trainees/receptees
(paragraph 12).
9.
Assaults.
Assaults are aggravated (higher maximum sentence) due to the
status of the victim. Simple assault carries a maximum sentence of confinement for
three months under Article 128, UCMJ. If the victim is a commissioned officer in
the execution of his office, the maximum punishment is a DD and confinement for 10
years (Article 90). Under Article 91, if the victim is a warrant officer, NCO, or
petty officer in the execution of his office, the maximum sentence is a DD and five
years (warrant officer victim), DD and three years (superior NCO victim), and DD
and one year (other NCO or petty officer victim). If the victim is a person acting
in the execution of law enforcement duties, the maximum sentence is a DD and CHL
for three years.
Any discussion of this crime should include 18 USC, Section 1114, titled
"Protection of Officers and Employees of the United States."
It lists numerous
such officers and employees, and covers the murder (or attempted murder) of them.
This law has national and extraterritorial application.
In other words, the
offender may be prosecuted whether the crime has occurred on an area of federal
jurisdiction or not, whether it occurred within the United States or overseas.
Under 18 USC, Section 111, anyone who "forcibly assaults, resists, opposes,
impedes, or intimidates, or interferes with any person designated in Section
1114...while engaged in or on account of the performance of his official duties" is
subject to a ,000 fine and imprisonment of not more than three years.
If the
crime involves the use of "a deadly or dangerous weapon," the punishment is
increased to a ,000 fine and not more than 10 years imprisonment.
What these
laws do, then, is protect the persons who are so designated, wherever they may be.
The purpose is to protect federal officers and employees whose duties involve such
things as criminal investigative/law enforcement duties, and whose work involves a
substantial degree of physical danger.
Without broad federal jurisdiction over
these crimes, these individuals may not be sufficiently protected by state law.
Also, overseas, their protection would otherwise depend on the willingness of the
host nation to prosecute the offender.
28 CFR Part 64, designated certain additional persons to be covered under
Section 1114 (and, therefore, Section 111).
The law now specifically includes
military police and investigators, a term which encompasses investigators in the
military criminal investigative organizations, as well as both military and
civilian DOD personnel who are engaged in law enforcement, corrections, and guard
duties. The addition, then, assures federal jurisdiction to prosecute the killing,
attempted killing, kidnapping, assault, intimidation, or interference with any of
these people while they are engaged in the performance of their official duties.
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