Briggs correctly decided?

In United States v. Briggs, the U.S. Supreme Court held that the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) contains no statute of limitations for rape. Beyond the three convicted rapists who brought the appeal, few will be very disappointed to learn of this ruling. People who commit rape deserve punishment, regardless of how long they have managed to get away with their crimes. Nonetheless, we can profitably notice when Courts give us desirable results by stretching the language of statutes. Such observation is especially useful in refuting that same Court’s helpless claims, in other contexts, that the statute dictated the result. It is rare indeed for a statute to make judges do anything that they do not wish to do.
. . .
​If nothing turned on how the Court answered the question presented, the Justices might well have reasoned that rape carried a five-year statute of limitations. That is the more persuasive interpretation of the statutory text. But something turned on the resolution of the issue: the convictions of three rapists that the Justices likely wanted to see punished. We can thus conclude that when the Court wishes to reach a particular result in a statutory interpretation case, it reaches that result. And therefore, when the Court issues what appears to be a disturbing opinion in a statutory interpretation case, there too, it has reached the result that it wanted to reach. They can no longer don the T-shirt that says “The Statute Made Me Do It.”

Sherry F. Colb, United States v. Briggs: The Court Reaches a Wrong but Just Result. Verdict, 28 June 2021.

From the SCOTUS Desk.