also, the heartbeat of wounded me. sharon -- wounded knee. "theatkinson, author of british are coming," and the founding director of the m.i.t. center for collective intelligence discusses his book "superminds." live saturday, august 31 at 10:00 a.m. eastern on book tv on c-span two. the defense department's advisory committee on sexual assault in the military held a public meeting in arlington, virginia with criminal law and justice division chiefs from the army, navy, marine corps, air force, and coast guard. the meeting began with committee members reviewing the conviction and acquittal rates for military sexual assaults in 2018.

thank you, good morning. i would like to welcome the members and everyone in attendance today to the 13th public meeting of the defense advisory committee on investigation, prosecution, defense of sexual assault in the armed forces. of the 15 committee members, 11 members are present and a 12th member will be joining us by telephone at 10:00 this morning. two members were not able to attend today. major general marsha anderson and judge reggie walton. it was created in 2015 in accordance with the national defense authorization act in 2015 as amended. our mandate is to advise the secretary of defense on the investigation, prosecution,

and defense of allegations of sexual assault and other sexual misconduct involving members of the armed forces. please note that today's meeting is being transcribed. the complete written transcript will be posted on the website. today's meeting will begin with the dac ipad's fiscal 2018 for conviction and acquittal rates of sexual assault in the military based on its collection of case documents from all military sexual assault cases closed during the fiscal year. next, the staff director will provide an overview of the draft department of defense report on allegations of collateral misconduct against individuals identified as victims of sexual assault. this draft report was submitted to the dac ipad in fulfillment of section 547 of the fiscal and national defense authorization act for fiscal year 2019. following the overview of the report, service representatives involved in the report, drafting

and data collection will appear before the committee to answer questions about the data, and the report methodology. following the collateral misconduct, the committee will hear from three additional panels. the services military justice division chief, the services special victim's counsel program managers, and the services trial defense service organization chief. these panelists will each respond to questions from committee members regarding their organization's written responses to questions, the dac ipad committed in may on sexual assault and acquittal rates. the case adjudication process, and the victim declinenation to participate in the military justice process. and i want to thank these were very substantive responses. following these discussions, the committee will receive a case working review group and presentation by its data working group regarding the fiscal year 2018 case adjudication data

report plan. for the final session of the meeting, the committee will deliberate on the dod collateral misconduct report and services responses to its written questions. each public meeting of the we've received no request for public comment for the meeting. if a member of the audience would like to comment on the issue before the committee directed to the dac ipad all at the discretion of the chair. written comments may be submitted at anytime for the committee's consideration. before we do the data review, i i think we will start off with colonel where. we are ready for your remarks. >> thank you, ma'am. as the chair mentioned, this collateral misconduct study was the result of the national defense authorization act.

legislation, the secretary of defense shall submit a report to the congressional defense committee that includes the following information. i'm reading now from the legislation that there are three requirements that this legislation put out. number one, the number of instances in which a covered individual was accused of misconduct or crimes considered collateral to the investigation of a sexual assault committed against the individual. it is important to understand what a covered individual is. it is defined in this section to be an individual identified as a victim of a sexual assault in the case files of a military criminal investigative organization. number two, the number of instances in which adverse action was taken against the covered individual, who was accused of collateral misconduct or crimes as described in paragraph one. number three, the third piece of

information that was required was the percentage of investigations of sexual assaults that involved an accusation or adverse action against a covered individual, described in paragraphs one and two. the services we are tasked with gathering was the information in a draft report forwarded in the letter from the dod general counsel on june 11, 2019. he provided the draft report to give us some opportunity to offer any additional information or analysis and provide that feedback to the secretary of defense. reply requested that they september 15 in the report is due to congress on september 30. they reviewed the draft report submitted by each of the services to include the coast guard. the staff requested a meeting with the service representatives on the individuals who are responsible for compiling the information in the draft report.

this meeting was held july 9 in the conference room. the staff requested this meeting so we could better understand the methodology behind the gathering of the information, because it was clear there were differences in methodology and definitions between the services. the navy marine corps only committed collateral misconduct as an inquiry into the collateral misconduct initiated. that report that was initiated. the army defined an accused is a victim who may have possibly committed a violation and set a slightly different definition, but the air force did not require a separate investigation into the misconduct. the army had a very low number of sexual assault investigation, april 1, 2017 to march 1, between 19 involving an army victim. based on the experience of the

king reviews in the court-martial database we knew something was off. during the meeting we sometimes some were not counted. after they said corrected numbers it changed percentages. as the staff reviewed the percentages it became apparent that percentages perhaps did not accurately reflect the victims who had been punished as a percentage of those victims who committed collateral misconduct. instead the services report the number of those receiving adverse actions involving surface number victims from their respective services. as a result of the report and the different methodologies, we thought it was important that the committee have an opportunity to review the services report which we have sent to you for your review and

also have the opportunity to deliberate and discuss, near the end of this public session, in order to compile a letter back to the secretary of defense. pending any of your questions, that is all i have. >> anybody have any questions? masone will turn to mr. for your remarks. >> morning, ma'am. you don't have to strap and because i'm not as excited as i was yesterday. we're only going to cover just the conviction and acquittal rates. this afternoon i cannot promise we will not be excited again because we will do all the data, but for conviction and acquittal rates, the first chart we have up is the outcomes for penetrative offensive referred to for court-martial, and i apologize it is just the one slide. but if you look at the top line,

that's 2018. when somebody had a referred penetrative offense in 28.2% of the time they were convicted for a penetrative offense and the other extreme is 37.3% when they were acquitted of all charges. if they had multiple charges in the most serious was penetrative, and 37.3% of the time they were acquitted of everything which is an increase over fy 17 with the overall acquittal rate was almost 31%. when you look at that same class of cases where it is a penetrative referred to trial and handled and adjudicated by a military judge, the conviction rate for the penetrative events goes to 33.3%, which was previously 28.2% overall. the acquittal rate drops to 17%. you have a much lower acquittal rate when you are going to a

military judge. where it gets interesting is when it is adjudicated by a panel of members. the conviction rate is 23.2%, which is slightly lower than the overall rate, that the acquittal rate is 59.4%. looking at the statistics it might be safe to say that if you have a penetrative case that is referred you may want to have it adjudicated in front of members because your chances for acquittal are much higher than if you go before a military judge. the acquittal rate bounces back and forth, so there isn't a true trend we can identify that it is going in one direction or the other. only say that in the most recent year the acquittal rate is much higher than it was in the previous year. look at those same metrics when we are talking

about a contact offense that was referred to trial. you have a much smaller universe of cases but when you are looking at convicted of a contact offense it is almost 14.5% and the acquittal rate is 20.9%, and going back to when we were talking about penetrative, it was 28.2% in the acquittal was 37.3. you had a higher acquittal rate overall for penetrative then with contact offenses. if you have a contact case that is adjudicated in front of the 15% forou are at almost conviction for the contact and only 6.5% foreign acquittal. you have a much larger 78.7% convicted of some other offense. the sexual assault was the most serious offense they were charged with, and then there

, foundher offenses thety of those rather than sex assault or be completely acquitted. and then when you look at it for military members, the overall acquittal rate, again, is much higher when you're dealing with members. 4.7 --itary judge was at 4.7% overall, in front of members it was 46 .7% acquittal. interestingly, the convicted for a contact offense with victims was almost 17% and it was 15% of the judge. the members are finding them guilty of a contact offense more than the judge, but the judge's them guilty of something, and the members are more likely to quit. we wanted to give you an overview of what's happening

with penetrative incontact so you have it in the back of your mind as you are hearing the professionals and you can ask their opinion of do they see this as a trend or a problem. we are not trying any conclusions that it is right or wrong, we're just giving you what we know from our statistics in the system of what is happening at the trial level. thank you, ma'am. >> thank you, mr. mason. i have a couple questions. where contact offenses the military judge was convicting a substantial number , with thoseffenses charges standing alone have had to go to a general court-martial? specifics knowing the , i can't tell you. in our database, in order for a case to be in our database, it has to be penetrative or contact sexual assault, but we also enter every other offense on the

charge sheet. we could go through our database and look and say contact was the most serious sexual assault, but is there an attempted order? was there something else that was an extreme defense that would rise to the level of general court-martial? i could tell you that but i don't have it on the top of my head. >> things like underage drinking or fraternizing would have gone to general court-martial? >> not necessarily. >> hey can you go back to your first slide for a moment? >> yes, ma'am. >> if you take the full acquittal rate from fiscal year 18 -- i can't really see the numbers that well -- what is the total percentage? ofif you are convicted sexual assault, penetrative or attact, you are going to be 28%, 29%. acquittal is going to

be -- acquittal is about 70%. acquittal at 70%, thank you. >> yes, ma'am. >> are there any other questions? >> mr. mason, thank you. i'm just curious if there is any similar data in the civilian contacts for judge or jury outcomes in cases that you know of. >> i'm not aware of it. talked and when kate is speaking later she can tell you respect to theth investigations going forward -- we could probably look at the sentencing commission and see what metrics they are tracking but i don't know of anything that is a direct correlation to what we have. >> in this data tells you what is happening but doesn't tell you why?

that would involve further -- >> absolutely. and we can tell you these are the results, and if you want to see the record of trial for cases, we have much of the documents. we don't have the complete transcript, but we can pull out what the report was. we can look at what they advised. say that the committee decided to go forward or not and we can tell you -- it is severely antiquated and we aren't able to follow every specific charge on a straight-line -- it puts them into blocks and we have to look within each block and try to marry our minds. that doesn't mean we can't do it, it is just labor-intensive. >> one more question. i just want to make sure i understand this. when i'm looking at the fiscal year, i see the 37.3% but the

other pieces -- >> they are convicted of something. the mosthow that serious offenses referred to the court or shall was a penetrative. however if they were found not guilty of penetrative but guilty of contact offense or assault and battery, the assault and battery would be in that blue column, so we are saying that there was a conviction but it wasn't for penetrative. >> thank you. >> and i just want to make sure i understand -- in order for them to do the best work, it is -- you need a better database. >> we need a legitimate database. we are using a sharepoint website, sharepoint was developed as a way to share documents. because we are document-based system and we have to have a legal document that we can look

at and pull the information from, we take those and enter them into fields so we can aggregate what we have, but to get an outcome, the only way you can do it is to get a spreadsheet and start by columns and count them. if you ask anyone who works in database, this is not. it has served remarkably well for its purposes -- the tpp started this with limited funds and limited people. person, we have one individual who has entered all 4000 cases into our database , she has read every one of those documents and categorizes it and enters it. the only way we can do this going forward is with a legitimate database that you are able to track, each individual offense as a unit, then combine those units into the case and then look at the cases -- we are

unable to do that. >> and that would better serve the members of this committee. >> it would better serve the members of this committee and allow you to present the information to the services as well as to congress, who is ask you to investigate this. it would allow you to do the job you've been asked to do. >> thank you. >> thank you so much for the information, i call you are inspector gadget. to understand your information and be able to manage it. are you aware of the different brass of the military of any information management system or database that is able to track the information and report data as you have presented to us today? >> there are systems within each tracke that attempt to courts-martial that are happening from beginning to end, however -- and this is something i will get into with the data report -- he asked them to

provide the cases to us so we can add them to the database. when the charge sheet is created we don't have access to it, we have to wait for them to provide it to us. the problem we have run into is the number of cases that these services report to us as being a valid case for the purposes of our study. the actual responsive rate is nowhere near what they think it should be. they gave us 774 cases in this past year that they believe are a penetrative or contact sexual assault that was resolved and that fiscal year. only 574 of those were actual cases that we could track. 75% of what they told us were actually the cases. the other ones that were reported were maybe a child sex assault that we don't track, or maybe it was a different fiscal year that just happened to surface in their system, or they

duplicated and told us the same name two or three times. unfortunately, this year we ran into an issue where we have multiple cases that were reported as being cases but they have no documentation to back it up in their system. we have a name, but we don't have an actual case. we don't know it is a case and we can't count it. the short answer is no, there is not a system that i am aware of that can do what we are trying to do. yes, sir. >> thank you, mr. mason. i think we are ready for the panel, the service pedal on collateral misconduct, lieutenant colonel cason, lieutenant kramer, and lieutenant miller.

>> good morning and welcome. thank you for being here to share your perspective on the collateral misconduct and the

results of studies. withoing to started off one question and we will see with the other members have. do you all agree that you should be using the same definitions, for the same terms as you are reporting because of some of your different definitions. a 10% adverse action collateral misconduct, and the marine corps showed a 92% they arection, until talking apples and oranges. i start with you lieutenant miller. do you think we should all be using the same definition? >> yes, ma'am. i think this is just a function of the first time conducting this type of study. think all covered

individuals -- >> uniform definitions would be useful. a much would provide more useful measure of services, but in the responses for the marine corps it has likely been much different suspected of collateral misconduct. >> we generally agree that having universal definitions and attempts by the services to try wecoordinate this -- basically got together and try butash out the services, some of them are just cultural things, adverse information or adverse conduct.

it is based on the lack of statutory types provided to us initially. weng through this iteration, can go through where the bumps whether -- going for the future, it has better data pools. >> i can't pronounce you listening -- is it -- what is the difference between suspected of collateral misconduct and accused? ofaccused, we normally think some sort of formal accusation, where somebody is being accused of something. suspected would include things like a witness statement or some other information that came to the light of the commander, where they could have been

accused of collateral misconduct but they weren't. that is why those numbers were not reflected. >> should they be treated differently now? >> they are not treated differently but they are not captured in numbers. it is important to point out that when we analyze the numbers we are all talking about a very small percentage of cases we are dealing with. numbers,arine corps 826 victims that we looked at, 10 of them received any sort of adverse action. there were probably higher numbers included where there was some sort of underage drinking or some sort of offense or the command could have taken action, but there was no formal inquiry, no formal action taken. we define those as being not accused of collateral misconduct, because there was no accusation made. outnd this is maybe going

toward the end, but i know that we are looking at this data for , but your work handling sexual violence cases -- is it useful data to know if there are victims that are facing collateral consequences depending on what's happening to this cases in terms of whether you are improving justice, or is this something that you just see as an exercise, people overseeing what you are doing? it is a policy stance of when there are concerns about retaliation, often linked to ,ome sort of adverse action taken against victims that might dissuade them from reporting.

looking at retaliation as an adverse act by the chain of command, knowing that overall the consistency has a very low percentage of actual adverse action helps us understand that there are valid concerns about but the retaliate -- the reality of overall percentages is in the minority and that 1%. it lets us focus more on social ostracism, to make that not a factor. >> i would agree with that as well, i think just having the data by itself is important, i'm a proponent of that. advocate, i know it is important from that

perspective because that is something that gets talked about , if you report sex assault and what kind of adverse consequences that might expose you to. toy glad we took the time get an answer on what the numbers are on that. i agree that it is very useful. of,trend we've been aware pulling these numbers, 70% of those who received adverse -- something for underage a prior, there was incident preceding sexual assault. perspectivemander's we can certainly see why it might be reasonable for them to feel like they need to take action but also understanding it from the victim's perspective as

well, that would be the toughest case for a victim to come forward and report having had previous adverse reactions. yes, it is important, and we want to understand victim from coming forward because of the collateral circumstances. >> i think all the highlights -- i know it was valuable for the coast guard, looking at a one-size-fits-all approach to collateral misconduct, but i think that was guided more by what was perceived instead of the actual data we found because as everyone has stated, the percentage of actual collateral misconduct is very low in

comparison to what i think somebody who doesn't have access to these numbers would look at and say is happening, because those are the cases that you do here about the most. actual policy decisions drive, and it reinforces the unique commanders indiscretion to address issues where you might have other good order and discipline issues that need to be addressed and can really only be addressed in a very specific -- fact specific scenario. thank you. wall were looking at -- was there ad timeframe you were looking at?

i assume for most of you the answer is yes -- do you think you could see some time, conduct that comes downstream after could besault that causally related to the sexual assault that would not be captured in these numbers but could result in adverse action? yes, we have a look at whether it was captured in the initial report, we went and got every case from the time period and identified that victim and pulled that case. we foundf the cases the impetus of reporting. someone came up hot for cocaine and they were being processed for separation and adverse and during that time

period in the administration of the adverse action, one report came down. consider that collateral because it was very close in time and it could have been self soothing or self-medicating to deal with the trauma. that was captured in the overall numbers because we consider that the collateral stop we could have just said it didn't happen -- there's a little bit of adjustment and in that particular case the sexual assault was used as mitigating the command use their discretion and said we understand there is sexual assault involved and how that might be related and they suspended all the actions in it. the way the army approached it was if you look at anything around that time period -- we had each unit through that case related to the misconduct or sexual assault and reported that

back in our numbers. >> all the collateral misconduct someported here does have direct coincidence with sex assault. night --ed the same that's not to say we didn't also get when we were collecting the that-- maybe from commands didn't quite understand what we were asking for, but they give us reports of misconduct by the victim that happened afterwards that clearly had a connection to the sex assault. the psychological trauma maybe led them to become engaged in substance abuse, so we have that data. but we didn't consider that to be collateral misconduct to the task.

>> i agree as well. that would be incredibly useful data. it wasn't included in the marine corps numbers as well. we had a number of cases where we double checked with the command was saying by pulling the records and we would go through and see that a victim had a month or two months after the sexual assault so we would go back and say double check this in the command would come back usually saying it was a separate incident so it was not collateral misconduct. when we did go through all those records, it was almost sad or heartbreaking to see the high percentage of cases where the person is being separated a year, six months after sexual assault for something like a mental health condition or some -- if that's an issue, we did

address or at least decided it warrants further study. the study that looked at victims after the reported sexual assault -- a percentage of them,, six months a year, two years down the road are separated or get out of the service, and what the reasons are that they separate would be very useful and beneficial. >> thank you for asking the question, ma'am, because it is a key distinction between the definitions and the services. the air force did something slightly different in the navy, and that we only included conduct that was happening at the time of the allegation that wasn't already known, meaning if it happened after it was not included, and when we further reviewed our numbers. we also excluded that misconduct that was already known. our initial numbers were any misconduct that was happening roughly in the same course of the investigation.

but we excluded that misconduct that was already known, because our understanding was that this study had information that would dissuade a victim from coming forward. if the misconduct was already known, presumably it wouldn't dissuade a victim from coming forward. for example, the air force had one victim -- there was already a command directed investigation for the misconduct. during the course of that investigation, a sexual assault was alleged, similar to what the army described. we included it because our understanding of the basis for the study was different. >> yes, ma'am. the coast guard did something very similar or identical to what the air force did in that you had to have the sexual assault first and then the

misconduct came next. the authority had to have been aware of both the sexual assault allegations as well as the misconduct for us to count it in our numbers. anyone, butnclude what i would refer to a subsequent misconduct did, in certain cases similar to substance abuse, where you had someone several years down the alcohol.ither drugs or through that it came to light well itd -- i think as would be very difficult in certain situations to understand what subsequent misconduct would look like, whether it's a

or ife in performance someone gets article 15 road, whereown the what the actual causal link is to the sexual assault. when you look at separation, that might be easier, but if you have a high performer and then all of a sudden there performance declines but there is still an average performer korma or even slightly below average, you wouldn't be able to capture it was directly related to the sexual assault like you would if there is a substance abuse aspect. thank you. one of the things we discovered when we looked at the data is that the services had a very different approach to what was called false reports, with the air force counting. or it's as part of their data on

collateral misconduct and the other services did not. the question is how do you define a false report? did it require recantation by the victim? usedwas the criteria you to determine that a report was false? and how did you make the determination that a report was false? and do you think it's appropriate to consider issues of full report in collateral misconduct data? >> the coast guard -- looking at our numbers, there were two instances of false reports, one from a third party that witnessed a sex act that was then discovered to be consensual during the course of

investigation. wherehere was another one the alleged victim, alleged sexual assault, was determined to be not a sexual assault. both of those numbers were however in our numbers, there was no adverse action taken for the false report -- one because it was the third party that received it and the other instance -- there was just no action taken. both of those members were included in our collateral misconduct. >> so it is difficult to know i think what would be useful for us to know as to whether a false allegation should or should not be included. it is logical that if the basis of the sexual assault allegation is found to be false it wouldn't

be collateral misconduct. a recommendation would be to exclude that and it certainly goes back to the initial question, that uniformity in definition would be useful. we didn't make a determination or define false allegation -- we left to whether there were circumstances or if there was a false allegation -- in the air force there were five of those cases and in two of them there were adverse actions -- that would have been at the command of the local office, whether they made that determination. we had additional cases where there were false official statements not related to a false allegation. we didn't make an internal definition of false allegation, if there was a false official statement related to the sexual assault happening at all stop we also didn't include similar but different questions where there

was a cross-claim of sexual assault -- we had 10 of those cases, where there is an allegation of sexual assault and collateral misconduct -- you sexually assaulted me or the accused said no you assaulted me -- so we had a cross-claim. we found it challenging to count those so we called them false official statements, not false allegation. we found those very challenging. >> we did not attempt to get into the underlying merits of anyone allegation. we defined a false allegation as command having taken action against that person, either in mgp or court-martial. there were five cases where a for making anished

false allegation and that was not included in the collateral misconduct report. we did have other numbers that were included, where the way the incident was recorded led the commander to believe that taking action against that person was nonetheless appropriate. cases where a person is pulled over for a dui, then a month was driving intoxicated to flee a sexual assault that happened at another location and i'm not going to provide any statement to the ncis about it. our position is we will not find that as false or true, we will not look at the merits of the but the commander may nonetheless feel it is appropriate to take disciplinary action against that person for the offense that was discovered. we at ncis -- those total

number of sex assault investigation that they handed us, they had a certain number of those where that investigation had transitioned into an investigation for either perjury or false official statements against the victim. there were five i believe in total -- we looked at those in determined what exactly they were investigating -- doesn't look like a false allegation of sex assault, or was that a false official statement that happened during the investigation? if it was, they determined that the false official statement was tied to the allegation itself. to be a falseat report of sex assault. when we looked at the case outcome and reached back out to the command and asked them what

consider -- we didn't it to be collateral misconduct -- we just decided to included in the report as an additional data point. >> so when we put our guidance decided forield, we it is broadly defined as a victim of misconduct that might be associated with the victim of a sexual assault. false reporting is one of those concepts -- is it a true false report or is it simply not sufficient evidence. those are different things. we identified eight cases out of 154 where someone received misconduct as a false report. thatally, when we close case, there is a distinction between probable cause -- not

enough evidence versus a false report. i would have to go check those eight cases to see if they were classified in the report but there was a universe of cases where we had pulls and because some would consider an allegation of false reporting to be collateral, i would try to get at the intent of seeing people reporting sexual assault somehow being punished and there feelings not -- trying to get that concept of how many of those cases are out there and how many are accused of making a false report. it seems to be a very low number. >> and curious -- it might make a difference to the victims. how does collateral misconduct come to light question mark i can think of three ways or maybe

more -- the victim says you should know something happened or the investigators uncover it or the on their own -- accused makes an allegation or says something about misconduct -- i'm curious about how the misconduct comes to light or maybe it's just all different. >> so many different ways. if you look at the highest percentage of the ones we saw -- underage drinking will come out very early -- if it's an alcohol facilitated sexual assault -- you want to know how old everyone is and it doesn't require self reporting. sometimes it comes to light during the disciplinary fraternization, and then they make an allegation of sexual assault. sometimes it comes from third parties.

that is why we through a fairly broad net on the term accused and i agree it would have been suspected as better but accused has a very specific meaning -- accused in normal parlance just means someone telling you you did something. broadway's we try to broaden it as possible. >> i would agree with that. how thet really look at collateral misconduct in each case came to life -- we did it for every sex assault case -- did you take adverse action? we didn't ask how they learned about it, through the investigation for some sort of independent command. waye approach it the same -- they could've come to light ,n a number of different ways

especially how they became aware of the misconduct, other than to time theout 70% of the allegation of sexual assault preceded the collateral misconduct. 30% of the time where the commander is already aware or tracking some sort of issue, the sexual assault allegation was made after that. that's really the only way we broke out that distinction. >> the next thing i have is health -- only to emphasize the earlier point that we only examined it in light of the temporal aspect. taking out those things that were already known and that came to light as a command directed investigation. >> let of anything else to add. we didn't break out how that report of collateral misconduct came about.

peoplee the number of that actually received adverse consequences seems to be quite low across the services, that would mean the bulk of people don't receive adverse consequences. are your services tracking that in some way? i would think if they are part of whatever loper said that receives an adverse consequence -- this person also did underage drinking and then got a pass -- this is somehow retaliation. we start with you -- do you track that? >> we don't track it. there is certainly guidance in our regulation, we need to be victims, of alleged that often encourages them to wait until after the proceedings are done in the disposition of

those proceedings about whether deciding to take action. it is also held up to the special court-martial so we don't have battalion commanders that are able to take action without going through some higher process. we haven't been tracking all the times it doesn't happen because it's an exercise of prosecutorial judgment. -- commander in association i see the larger issue and in this particular case i don't think any additional action is we trust thosess court-martial commanders to make the decision. andaven't been tracking it realizing there is a very low but really even those cases where there's an only 154n, there's with the broadest net possible

of collateral misconduct. if you spread that across the size of our force, being as large as it is, that's a low percentage of collateral misconduct. it is not something we've tracked right now but it is something we are aware of and that is why the holding policy makes a lot of sense. that.oncur with all of it is not something we track, at least not now, if there is collateral misconduct and the fact pattern of the case and whether the commander decided not to take action -- we don't currently track that. as far as tracking where adverse action is taken -- now that there is an ongoing requirement to record that, we will be tracking that. it was a very low number of cases in the way in which even

happened. not a significant thing that happened. with everything that was said earlier -- the very low number of cases we see would not include the informal actions that might be taken by a squad forer or some other leader, example informally counseling theirdy and canceling weekend plans as a response to collateral misconduct. it may be the case that they could have a perspective on our numbers and they might feel like the adverse action was taken against them for collateral misconduct but it was something at the lower level that was not documented. i would echo what has already been said and also add that even there is a very low incidence of collateral misconduct, we tend to defer that to the end and we often

hear that victims often want the collateral misconduct directed so it is not an issue at trial. one of my colleagues in the trial division -- a victim would want underage drinking -- they hadn't receive the punishment and that doesn't cast any doubt on the accusation. we don't formally track, but as standard,the uniform we are adding victim information into case management and obviously going forward we will be addingalso we will into our system information about the victims and military justice system are accused based at this point and we are we haveed to know -- victim information added officially and any related cases

about something we are doing as a result of the initiative. think everything has been hit. is not tracking in any time apart from this report of collateral misconduct. currently there is no specific think there is maybe some ambiguity about what giveetion does this commanders either for false reports or collateral misconduct . >> going back to the very start, you said -- and thank you all for going down the line even if you are saying what i echo -- it really helps us when we don't assume everyone agrees. beginning you

mentioned that you tried to come up with some common ground and one thing you noted was that there were differences of differencescultural and you said for example adverse. you gave that is the example of cultural differences. i wonder if you can tell us more about what you meant by that specific example. >> [indiscernible] >> so everyone agrees on certain definitions and administered of separation proceedings, but things like nonpunitive reprimand that are filed or not filed -- if you don't file it it the equivalent of a counseling statement. but a soldier on the ground considers it to be adverse to

them if they get a negative comment in an evaluation. we consider negative formal evaluations in their personnel files. that is where there might be differences because some things are handled at the lowest level. anys not adverse under definition but could be adverse against the victim. >> i want to thank you'll for coming and we will hold you -- you will usem now the same group of sexual offenses and all the same definitions, correct? ok, great. thank you. [laughter] we will now move on to our next panel -- i believe the judge has joined us on the line, is that correct? judge, are you on the line?

>> ok, thank you for joining us this morning. we are going to be looking at the perspectives of the services military justice division chief regarding conviction acquittal rates, case adjudication and victim declination. -- thank you.