SCOTUS unanimously rejects narrowed interpretation of UCMJ statute of limitation for rape

The Supreme Court this morning handed down a unanimous opinion opinion in US v. Briggs, No. 19-108 (S. Ct. Dec. 10, 2020) (available here), concerning the applicable statute of limitations in military rape prosecutions.  Here is how Justice Alito's opinion for the Court gets started:

We must decide in these cases whether, under the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ), a prosecution for a rape committed during the period from 1986 to 2006 had to be commenced within five years of the commission of the charged offense or whether such a prosecution could be brought at any time, as is the rule at present.  The Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces (CAAF), reversing its prior decisions on this question, held that the statute of limitations was five years and that it therefore barred the rape convictions of respondents, three military service members.  See 78 M. J. 289 (2019); 78 M. J. 415 (2019); 79 M. J. 199 (2019).  We granted certiorari, 589 U. S. ___ (2019), and now reverse.

The opinion that follows goes on to discuss Eighth Amendment jurisprudence in the course of conclude that this jurisprudence should not impact interpretation of the statute of limitation at issue here. Here are some key passages:

In short, if we accepted the interpretation of Article 43(a) adopted by the CAAF and defended by respondents, we would have to conclude that this provision set out a statute of limitations that no one could have understood with any real confidence until important and novel legal questions [regarding the Eighth Amendment] were resolved by this Court. That is not the sort of limitations provision that Congress is likely to have chosen....

Viewing Article 43(a) in context, we are convinced that “punishable by death” is a term of art that is defined by the provisions of the UCMJ specifying the punishments for the offenses it outlaws. And under this interpretation, respondents’ prosecutions were timely.