“That it is better 100 guilty Persons should escape than that one innocent Person should suffer, is a maxim that has been long and generally approved; never, that I know of, controverted.” Benjamin Franklin
When civilians complain about injustices in the civilian judicial system, and they have no idea that the injustices in the military justice system are exponentially worse that those committed in the civilian system.
We know the civilian judicial system is terribly challenged and far from perfect, especially when the Department of Justice is weaponized to attack people based on their political beliefs more so than the crime they are accused of committing.
But, the military system was set up from the beginning to be biased in favor of the government. That’s because the system is only concerned about the perception of justice and not actual justice where the law is applied equally to everyone.
The term “military justice” is an oxymoron.
People accused in the military are automatically considered “guilty.” Guilt is then giving an imprimatur, a stamp of approval by a judicial system that is seriously flawed.
The Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) was created and implemented after World War II, when America became the world’s global police. This was a drastic shift from the prevailing public sentiment of isolation of the pre-war years. Many changes occurred including the establishment permanent overseas military bases and repeated deployments to “hot zones” around the world.
There were some problems that forced Congress and military leaders to conjure up a “uniform” set of statutes to enforce throughout the military. For example, being absent without leave when your unit departed was handled far differently depending on the service you were in. The Army considered it a minor infraction because sooner or later you would end up joining the unit. The Navy on the other hand called it missing ship’s movement, an infraction they considered very serious.
The United States military has executed 135 people since 1916. The most recent person to be executed by the military is U.S. Army Private John A. Bennett, executed on April 13, 1961 for rape and attempted murder.
While it’s still on the books, the military doesn’t use firing squads anymore, but the military does still have the death penalty. Although no one has been executed by a firing squad since Eddie Slovik in 1961. Currently, under the UCMJ, 14 offenses are punishable by death. Before the UCMJ, the generals and admirals had the authority to convene a quick hearing and sentence a sailor or soldier to death.
Military commanders needed a legal system that allowed them to address “unacceptable” behavior that arose with military members in their command. The UCMJ was created to get control of an out-of-control justice system.
If a commander based in Japan had a military member murder someone, he had all the legal means necessary to conduct an investigation, place a suspect in pre-trial confinement, press charges, and convene a court martial without having to send the individual back to the United States. The whole matter could be tied off very nicely and very quickly.
The UCMJ was intended to streamline the military judicial system and make it more uniform in military units throughout the world. If a sailor violated a statue of the UCMJ in Australia, and another violated the exact same statue in Iceland, theoretically both individuals were to be treated “uniformly.”
The UCMJ put the entire legal spectrum at a commander’s disposal, but in doing so, the UCMJ structure, trampled on basic legal rights and created multiple scenarios for the application of “unlawful command influence” that tainted one case after another.
The UCMJ is archaic, particularly in the 21st century, where communications around the globe are instantaneous, and a suspect can be simply air-transported to the United States for a trial, if necessary, that is less prone to the serious problem of unlawful command influence.
The problem of over-sentencing and convicting the innocent has become almost commonplace. The military judicial system is terribly corrupt and is in dire need of major reform. We are not talking about UCMJ version II, but scrapping the current system and establishing an entirely new system of jurisprudence that takes into account the desire for judicial fairness balanced with the military’s need for good order and discipline.
The United States Military has got to stop sending innocent people to prison.
WE APOLOGIZE.
MANY PARTS OF THIS WEBSITE ARE CURRENTLY STILL UNDER CONSTRUCTION.
IT WILL TAKE SOME TIME TO CONSTRUCT A LIBRARY OF INFORMATION FOR PEOPLE TO CONSULT, ESPECIALLY THOSE SERIOUSLY CONSIDERING JOINING THE UNITED STATES MILITARY.
We beg your indulgence while we construct this website. We assure you it will be a great REFERENCE website to keep handy. Our hope is to strengthen our military by eliminating procedures and structures that detrimentally affect the basic integrity of the military we all know and love.
Please be patient, we will have a great website up soon.
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