United States v. Briggs
The Supreme Court unanimously ruled that the military could prosecute rape cases regardless of how long ago the crime occurred, because the military's own justice code listed rape as a death-eligible offense — even though executing someone for rape was constitutionally unavailable.
The decision reinstates rape convictions against three service members charged years after their crimes and confirms that rape prosecutions under military law have no statute of limitations.
How it got here: The Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces threw out three service members' rape convictions on statute-of-limitations grounds; the government petitioned the Supreme Court, which agreed to hear the consolidated cases.
The Case in Depth
What happened
Three military service members were convicted of rape for crimes committed in 1998, 2000, and 2005 — each charged more than five years after the offense. The military's justice code imposes a five-year charging deadline for most crimes, but makes an exception for offenses "punishable by death," which face no deadline at all. Rape was listed in the military code as punishable by death, but the Supreme Court had previously ruled that the Constitution forbids executing anyone for raping an adult woman.
The question before the Court
Does the military's no-time-limit rule for capital crimes apply to rape charges, even though the Constitution bars executing someone for rape of an adult woman?
The Court's answer
Yes — the military could bring rape charges years after the offense was committed. The Court ruled that the phrase "punishable by death" in the military's no-time-limit rule refers to what the military's own justice code says about penalties, not to what the Constitution ultimately permits. Because the military code listed rape as a death-eligible offense throughout the relevant period, rape charges faced no statute of limitations — regardless of whether a death sentence could actually have been carried out.
The Court rejected the service members' argument that "punishable by death" must be read in light of the constitutional bar on executing someone for rape. Reading the phrase that way would make the charging deadline depend on unresolved constitutional questions about how that constitutional bar applies to the military — which would undermine the very purpose of having a clear statute of limitations in the first place.
Curious how the Court got there? See the step-by-step legal reasoning →
Why it matters
Service members who committed rape during the 1986–2006 period can be prosecuted no matter how much time has passed. Rape victims in the military have no hard deadline after which they must come forward. Prosecutors handling these cases know with certainty that no charging clock is ticking, removing years of legal uncertainty that the lower military appeals court had created.
What changes now
The cases are sent back to the Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces for further proceedings. The three service members' rape convictions, which that court had thrown out on statute-of-limitations grounds, are back in play. Congress has since amended the UCMJ to expressly remove any time limit for rape and similar offenses going forward, so the ruling primarily affects cases from the 1986–2006 period.
What this does not decide
The Court did not decide whether the Constitution actually bars the death penalty for rape in military courts — that question remains open. The Court also did not decide whether the UCMJ's own ban on cruel or unusual punishment independently prohibits a death sentence for rape, leaving both constitutional questions unresolved.
Concurrences and dissents
Concurrence — Justice Gorsuch
Justice Gorsuch agreed with the Court's decision on the merits and joined the full opinion, but wrote separately to note his continuing view that the Supreme Court lacks jurisdiction to hear appeals directly from the Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces. He set aside that concern because a majority of the Court believes jurisdiction exists.
How the Court got there
The legal reasoning, step by step
- The military justice code (UCMJ) sets a five-year statute of limitations for most crimes but creates an exception for offenses 'punishable by death,' which can be prosecuted at any time. The Court had to decide whether that phrase means punishable by death according to the UCMJ's own penalty rules, or punishable by death under all applicable law — including the Constitution.
- Because the UCMJ is a self-contained, unified code, the Court concluded the most natural way to read any term within it is by reference to other provisions of the same code. Since the UCMJ's rape article specifically authorized the death penalty, that was Congress's own answer to whether rape was 'punishable by death' within the limitations provision.
- Statutes of limitations are designed to provide clarity — prosecutors need to know their deadline, potential defendants need to know when they're no longer at risk, and victims need to know by when they must decide whether to press charges. Tying the deadline to a constitutional question (whether Coker v. Georgia, the 1977 ruling barring execution for rape, applied to military prosecutions) would leave the deadline unpredictably unsettled.
- Additional uncertainty would stem from the Eighth Amendment's 'evolving standards of decency' doctrine — which has already shifted in other contexts — and from a separate UCMJ provision (Article 55) that bans cruel or unusual punishment. Both could independently affect whether death was permissible, making the charging deadline turn on a chain of unresolved legal questions no one could have answered with confidence at the time Congress enacted the rule.
- The purposes of a statute of limitations — including accounting for how hard it is to gather evidence and mount a prosecution for a particular crime — are fundamentally different from the purposes behind Eighth Amendment analysis, which focuses on proportionality and societal standards. The Court found it unlikely Congress meant to tie the two together.