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Article 119 is the UCMJ's manslaughter statute, and it occupies the space between murder and a lawful or accidental killing. A manslaughter charge means the government alleges an unlawful killing...
A Chapter 10 is a request a service member makes to be administratively discharged instead of standing trial at a court-martial. The name comes from the Army regulation, but every...
A motion to suppress asks the military judge to exclude evidence the government obtained in violation of the accused's rights, so that the panel or the judge never considers it....
Nonjudicial punishment is a commander's tool for handling minor misconduct without a trial. Authorized by Article 15 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, it lets a commanding officer hear...
Both happen, in sequence. A military defense counsel is first assigned automatically, but an accused can then ask for a particular military lawyer by name. That request runs through a...
A conviction at a general or special court-martial is a federal criminal conviction. It is not an internal military matter that stays inside the uniform, and it does not vanish...
Yes, but rarely, and only through extraordinary doors that open for the unusual case rather than the disappointed one. Once direct appeals are exhausted, a court-martial judgment becomes final under...
A service member on trial by court-martial carries a full set of trial rights, and several of them are more generous than what a civilian defendant receives. At trial, the...
Military drug offenses are charged under Article 112a of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, and the way they are proven and the consequences they carry set them apart from...
The arraignment is the first time the accused, the military judge, and counsel come together on the record in a referred court-martial. It is a procedural milestone, not a showdown...
A court-martial conviction moves up a ladder of courts, and each rung does something different. The path runs from the trial record to the service Court of Criminal Appeals, then...
When an appellate court sets aside the findings or the sentence from a court-martial, that reversal does not automatically free the accused or end the case. In many situations the...
"Conduct unbecoming an officer and gentleman" is a criminal offense under Article 133 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, and it is one of the broadest charges in the...
Being charged with an offense does not, by itself, mean a service member is locked up before trial. Pretrial confinement is the exception, not the default, and it is allowed...
An Article 32 proceeding is a preliminary hearing held before charges can be referred to a general court-martial. It is not a trial, and since 2014 it is not a...
The military uses three levels of court-martial, and they rise in step with the seriousness of the alleged offense. A summary court-martial handles minor misconduct, a special court-martial handles intermediate...
Court-martial jurisdiction rests on two requirements that must both be present. The first is personal jurisdiction, meaning the accused holds a military status that subjects them to the Uniform Code...
An administrative separation is the military's non-criminal way of ending a service member's enlistment or commission before it otherwise would end. It is used for misconduct, substandard performance, certain medical...
Article 118 is the most serious charge the UCMJ contains. It is the military murder statute, and it is the only place outside a handful of national-security offenses where a...
Article 134 is known as the general article, and the name is apt. It is the catch-all of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, reaching conduct that is not specifically...
These three are punitive discharges, ordered as punishment by a court-martial, and the differences among them turn on who receives each one, how severe it is, and the lasting consequences...
A court-martial conviction does not end when the sentence is served. Because a general or special court-martial conviction is a federal criminal conviction, it carries collateral consequences that reach far...
A military criminal investigation starts with a report, not with a trial. Someone files a complaint, a command refers an allegation, or another agency passes along information, and one of...
There is no single answer to how long a court-martial takes, and any source that promises one should be read with caution. The honest answer is a range that depends...
A military defense lawyer does everything a civilian criminal defense lawyer does, and then a layer of work that has no civilian equivalent. The familiar parts are real: advising the...
In most cases, yes. A service member offered nonjudicial punishment under Article 15 generally has the right to refuse it and demand trial by court-martial instead. There is one well-known...
An Article 112a charge accuses a service member of wrongfully handling a controlled substance. The article reaches five distinct acts: wrongful use, possession, distribution, manufacture, and introduction onto a military...
The military must give the Article 31(b) advisement before questioning whenever two conditions line up: the questioner is a person subject to the UCMJ who is acting in an official...
Article 107 makes it an offense to make a false official statement with the intent to deceive. It is one of the most commonly added charges in military justice, because...
The short answer is that they barely differ in structure and differ a great deal in a handful of places that matter. The Military Rules of Evidence were drafted to...
After a court-martial, two administrative channels exist to fix a military record: the service Discharge Review Boards, which can adjust how a discharge is characterized, and the Boards for Correction...
The right to a speedy trial in the military is not a single rule but a set of separate protections that run on their own clocks. Three of them matter:...