If you are convicted of domestic violence in the military, you can go to prison, be reduced to E-1, lose your pay and allowances, receive a bad-conduct discharge or dishonorable discharge, and, if the sentence did not include a punitive discharge, still be processed for administrative separation or officer show-cause proceedings afterward. On top of […]

A lot of service members still think a domestic violence case is just a commander problem. That is outdated. OSTC means the Office of Special Trial Counsel. In plain English, it is the military’s specialized prosecution system for covered offenses. Domestic violence under Article 128b of the UCMJ is one of those covered offenses. That

A lot of service members think an order-violation case is minor. It is not. What starts as “I just texted her back” or “I only went by the house to talk” can turn into a new charge, a stronger story for the government, and a domestic violence case that suddenly becomes much easier to sell.

If you are under investigation for domestic violence, you do not have time to sit around and “see how this plays out.” The first 24 to 72 hours matter. That is the window where command starts reacting, investigators start collecting statements, protection measures get put in place, and the government starts deciding what kind of

Executive summary A conviction for domestic violence under Article 128b is no longer “just an assault case with a family label.” It now sits inside a structured sentencing system where confinement is guided by mandatory “sentencing parameters” (ranges) and where firearms consequences are often automatic and career-ending. Domestic violence under 10 U.S.C. § 928b (Article 128b) can be charged several

Without a doubt, one of the charges we are seeing more and more often out of the military justice system is strangulation under UCMJ Article 128b. Some would ask us why we would defend service members charged with trying to strangle someone. The answer is simple. Justice in any honest definition of the word presupposes

Many service members come into the military young, sexually inexperienced, and with sexual expectations shaped more by porn than by real life. That may sound like a harmless reality of the internet age, but it is not. For some service members, that skewed baseline is leading directly to trouble under the UCMJ. One of the

False allegations of domestic violence do not come out of nowhere. They usually show up when something else is already breaking. A marriage is collapsing. Cheating just came to light. Divorce is around the corner. Custody is about to become war. Housing is on the line. Money is tight. One spouse wants the upper hand.

A lot of service members ask the same panicked question the moment the spouse or partner cools off: “If she takes it back, is the case over?” Usually, no. That is one of the hardest things for people to understand about domestic violence cases under Article 128b of the UCMJ. Once the allegation is in