The Magazine

The Wheels of Military Justice . . .

The pitfalls of speedy court martial trials.

May 24, 2004, Vol. 9, No. 35 • By BARRY D. HALPERN
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THE UPCOMING COURT MARTIAL trials in the Abu Ghraib detainee abuse cases may have consequences neither intended nor anticipated by the military and civilian authorities who are pushing for a quick and decisive resolution of the affair. These trials--the first is scheduled to begin May 19 in Baghdad--will not be drumhead proceedings with preordained guilty verdicts. Unless the investigations that preceded the public disclosures of abuses result in early plea agreements, the cases may get ugly, complicated, and tedious. Especially as the trials seem to be proceeding hastily. If military authorities have followed normal procedures for processing serious cases, the Abu Ghraib prosecutions are at about the stage of the Kobe Bryant case, which is months away from trial.

The old post-Vietnam saw that "military justice is to justice as military music is to music" is long out of date. Today's military justice system operates under a well-developed body of federal law, with procedures and prosecution standards that largely mirror civilian practice. The Judge Advocate General (JAG) departments of the service branches attract and retain well-credentialed professionals who are both lawyers and military officers--in that order. Military trial lawyers come from some of the country's best law schools and are well trained at JAG schools and civilian post-graduate programs. They often have more trial experience than their civilian colleagues, and they're every bit as zealous in the representation of their clients. (At Guantanamo Bay, military lawyers ignored Department of Defense protocol in petitioning civilian federal courts on behalf of their internee clients.)

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