During the first week of October, I tried two Courts-Martial, or Court-Martials, whichever you prefer. I actually like Courts-Martials as the plural form of Military criminal trials, but that appearently is not an option. One was the equivalent of a Federal felony child abuse case, and one was a Federal misdemeanor trial. In the Military, there are no "misdemeanors or felony" trials, the types of Court-Martials are split up however very similarly with General Court Martials used when the sentence could be over a year and Special Court-Martials used for up to 12 months confinement. (There is also a third type called a Summary Court Martial that uses an Officer instead of a Judge and is far less formal with the maximum confinement set at one month.)
For the General Court Martial dealing with a step-father who had been sexually abusing his son for three years, I was the lead prosecutor. For the second trial, which was a Special Court Martial, I served as the second chair. This case dealt with a staff sergeant who physically abused some of the Soldiers for whom he was put in charge. Below is pictured my co-counsel, CPT Bashore. Due to the difficult time restraints in doing trials downrange, we actually started the second trial the same day that we finished the first one. You can see I look quite haggard.
Pretty nice set-up for a court room in Iraq, but they were held in Balad, Iraq where I flew in and out of from Kuwait (see previous posts). Warhorse isn't big enough to have its own courtroom. Balad is quite big and has two heliport terminals and an airport. Warhorse can only handle helicopters but is only a 15-20 minute helicopter ride to Balad. We flew Blackhawks into Balad the first time, and returned via Styker convoy which took an hour and a half and was a lot less comfortable.
