>United States v Briggs 19-108
it will be asked to decide whether three men convicted of military rape should not have been prosecuted in the first place because of the statute of limitations. And, should each side’s principal argument fail, the court may be forced to decide a bigger question: whether the Eighth Amendment prohibition against capital punishment for non-homicide rape applies to rape in the military.
A key issue in this litigation is which subsection of the UCMJ, 10 U.S.C. Section 843, applies: subsection (a), which states that “any [military] offense punishable by death may be tried and punished at any time without limitation,” or subsection (b), which creates a five-year statute of limitations for other military offenses. The government argues that Section 843(a) applies because military rape is made “punishable by death” by 10 U.S.C. Section 920(a), which states, “Any person subject to this chapter who commits an act of sexual intercourse, by force and without consent, is guilty of rape and shall be punished by death or such other punishment as a court-martial may direct.” The three defendants argue that military rape is not “punishable by death” because the Supreme Court’s Eighth Amendment precedents prohibit capital punishment for non-fatality rapes. And if military rape is not punishable by death, then the applicable limitations period is the default provision of Section 843(b).
http://scotusblog.com/?p=296845