U.S. Military Justice System - You don’t know JAG
If you’re knowledge of US military justice consists solely of viewing the movie “A Few Good Men,” or the TV series “JAG” and “NCIS” then you don’t know JAG, the Judge Advocate General’s Corps. This lecture, taught by a real life retired JAG will dispel the popular misconceptions about military justice. It will explain why our military women and men are fortunate to have this system, which confers significant protections for suspected offenders not offered by civilian criminal justice systems.
This talk will describe the court-martial (criminal trial) process from investigation, search and seizure, rights advisements, through pretrial processes, juror selection, types of courts-martial, trial procedures, rules of evidence, sentencing, to the rights of victims in the process, especially sexual abuse victims. It will also include a description of the Judge Advocate General’s Corps. The criminal justice attorneys and paralegals of the Corps assist commanders in operating the military justice system. Each part of the military justice system will be compared with civilian criminal justice systems. Significant recent legislative changes in military justice will be included. Finally, there will be a brief discussion of a few of the instructor’s most interesting and notable cases.
James (Jim) C. Sinwell is a retired Air Force colonel with 23 years of active-duty service, all as a Judge Advocate. He has served as a trial prosecutor, trial defense counsel, appellate prosecution counsel, and later in his career, the Chief of the Air Force’s Trial Defense Division, responsible for defending all criminal matters brought against Air Force members. Jim has an undergraduate and law degree from the University of Pittsburgh and an advanced law degree in environmental law from George Washington University.