Might not surprise you, but being a JAG is nothing like the TV show. As I am using UCGX for the tow of shame back to the stand after I forgot how to use the hydraulics in the Aerosoft DC-8 (making the most of it) I noticed another topic had drifted off course. (A Marine started it, some sailors jumped in and the authorities finished it--the usual story). So for military types with stories involving the UCMJ, here's a new thread.

I sort of defaulted into law school because I had a BA in History and (yes, this is how my JAG career really started) I saw an episode of The A-Team that involved a JAG officer. A Navy recruiter visited the campus after my first year. (I think my school has since banned JAG recruiters because of... war or something). He was a pilot and I got a parachute strapped on and we went up in a trainer from our local KMDH. He did aerobatics and when we returned said, "This is how we land in the Navy." He put it down right on the numbers. Now, I had already been in the Army in my youth, and hated every minute of it, but this promised to be a lot more exciting than checking oil levels in jeeps at Ft. Campbell, not to mention a law career doing trusts and estates. I made the dean's list my first year and got accepted by the Navy JAG program in my second year. Between my second and third year I attended Officer Indoctrination School in Newport, RI along with a couple of doctors and many more nurses. If there was another lawyer, I don't recall. I got to be "Company Commander," which only meant I did my best to herd said doctors and nurses around in some semblance of close-order drill. We got pretty good at it, and a pulling off a tricky maneuver to slide the column into garage remains one of the highlights of my life. Of course, there were many more blunders I choose to forget. I won't forget the icy damage control exercise of the USS Buttercup. Water from the bay got pumped into a a training "ship" safely on dry land and hilarity ensued as we attempted damage control until we were in danger of drowning.

Back at law school, my classmates were sweating the job hunt between second and third year, but I was already set, as my plummeting GPA showed. There was only one hurdle left: passing the bar exam. I hadn't even studied some of the topics, and hadn't studied much at all during my third year. (There's a joke: "What do you call a doctor who graduates last in his class? 'Doctor.' How about a lawyer? 'Lieutenant.') I did manage to graduate, then took the bar exam. I got called to active duty, even though I didn't have my results, which wasn't supposed to happen. Nevertheless, I went back to Newport for Naval Justice School to learn the UCMJ: NJPs (Captain's Mast, Office Hours, or just Article 15s, depending on the branch), courts and boards, appeals, etc. I did pass the bar exam, and got sworn in by the CO of the school.

I got an orientation cruise aboard the Aegis cruiser USS Mobile Bay, which was the last time I enjoyed being on a ship. Then it was off to my first duty station: Naval Training Center Great Lakes. My third-floor office overlooked the parade ground. My wife was happy (we had four little kids). The CO was great and his wife made the other wives feel like a family. The Navy is very traditional and good about things like that. But my first assignment was far from the drama of the courtroom. I got "the penalty box," as it was called: PEB, or Physical Evaluation Boards. Every day I descended to the basement of Building One to represent sailors wanting to stay or wanting to leave due to medical issues. My tribunal was a crusty Marine bird colonel who had been a carrier pilot in Vietnam, an ancient chain-smoking doctor who was a Navy commander and a line lieutenant commander who was the least terrifying to new JG. The regs required my presence, but beyond that, the only time any of the three senior officers noticed me was if I gave them an excuse to pounce or my shoes weren't polished enough. So, I was a workers comp lawyer in uniform providing daily entertainment for three senior officers. It was miserable.

But the day came when I was summoned back to the third floor as trial counsel--a prosecutor! This, I was a natural at, and was duly promoted to full lieutenant. Until one day I had a a defendant in a serious case photographed for distinguishing physical characteristics by NCIS. Technically, since he was not asked anything, his defense counsel was not required. But I was still learning the difference between the law and how things are done. I should have known better, but I was inexperienced and cocky. The XO called all the lawyers in in yelled that I would be lucky to have a job "picking petunias" after that stunt. My fitrep went from "early advancement" language to "this officer seems destined to spend his life pushing on doors marked 'pull.' " I was headed back to the penalty box when Saddam invaded Kuwait. The op-tempo increased dramatically, of course, as we did literally thousands of wills along with the usual. Now, it happened that my MOS in the Army had been Arabic Linguist Voice Intercept. On that slender qualification, I volunteered for deployment.

All was forgiven. I was given a going-away NAM and sent to Sigonella, Sicily to ride a circuit that stretched from Gibraltar to the Gulf. There was the usual stuff at Sig, like legal assistance, some courts and boards, and a whole lot more powers of attorney and wills. For someone who never liked trusts and estates, I was doing wills for 50 states and I still imagine some Louisiana judge shaking his head at something I had drafted three decades ago. But Sig did offer MOJAGS. Every day you never knew if you would be on a plane or chopper to catch up with a ship in Spain, Israel or Bahrain, or somewhere underway. My wife (still with four little kids) was no longer happy. Promised base housing never materialized, and while I was off living my A-Team JAG adventure at last, she was stuck on the side of Mt. Etna with very little Italian. It might not have been legal, but cigarettes from the exchange (when she could get down to it) were both language and currency. I still admire her pluck because nothing had prepared us for living on the economy in Sicily. It was the best of times and the worst of times.

I quickly learned I was never going to see O4. Two weeks after I arrived at Sig, I was sent back the the U.S. for a some course at Charlottesville. SATO messed up my tickets and it was not until I asked the cab driver to take me to the university that I learned I had landed in Charlotte. It was bad luck, but you never get a second chance to make a first impression. I was still learning, and assumed if the Navy put me on a plane, it was destined for the right destination. I would never be more than a hopeless word not allowed in the eyes of my new command. But freed from any lure of advancement, I decided I might as well have as much fun wreaking havoc in the fleet as I could. I may have been the worst lieutenant in the history of the Navy JAG Corps. But, I was not the worst defense lawyer. The horrible and wonderful secret I took from my experiences in the fleet was that a defense lawyer could always count on three things: the facts would be against him, the law would be against him, but there was always be someone in charge more interested in avoiding career complications than some dumb legal case involving a crazy O-3. I did everything but hoist the jolly roger. I got kicked off ships. I'm not sure I'm allowed back in Israel to this day. (No joke: I was banned over a high-profile case in Haifa, which was great, since prosecuting someone whose defense lawyer isn't allowed in the country is really, really hard.)

I learned that to be an effective defense lawyer, you can't do anything wrong. So what? Everyone learns that. What the Navy taught me was trickier: never do anything exactly right, either.

 

 

 

Interesting career story Tim.  I spent 26 years in two (actually 3) services.  It was the Marines for Korea.  The Air Force for Vietnam.  And I had 16 years in when they were gong to send me back to Vietnam again.  So I declined to re-enlist and got out.  16 years Later at age 51 I joined the Colorado Air Guard and was assigned to a weather flight.  I got to go to weather school (observer school and forecaster school back to back).  But our weather flight was assigned to support an Army Armored Cavalry Regiment in the Montana Guard, so duty wise we were in the Army wearing Air Force BDUs.

I was the first sergeant (E-8) of the weather flight and whenever a troop misbehaved and had to see the commander he would always say, "I'm going to let the 'hanging judge' take care of this" and I would find the appropriate extra duty to fit the crime.  My nickname became 'judge'.

I actually enjoyed all of my military time, even in the war zones.  So why did I get out after 16 years?

One morning I came downstairs in my dress blues because I was going to get awarded a Meritorious Service Medal at an awards ceremony that morning.  My son, who was 5 at the time, saw me dressed up and started crying.  He thought I was going away again.  So when my orders to go back to SEA again I declined to re-enlist.

This was at Hill AFB in Utah, the AMA for the Minuteman III Missile.  By the time my actual discharge date arrived I was already working for General Electric.  I was technician for the engineer on the re-entry vehicle component testing.

When I was first in the Air Force I took a correspondence course on the UCMJ (or Rocks and Shoals) as they call it in the Navy and the Corps.  I found it very interesting.

BTW...I watch Law and Order a lot and have developed a hearty dislike (to put it mildly) for defense counsels.  He/she will know they are defending a serial killer-rapist and go balls out to get him off depicting him as a poor misunderstood soul who didn't know what he was doing and deserves to be freed to continue his life of crime.  I know about the canons to vigorously defend the accused, but I think they take it too far.  And when they have the defendant dead to rights with fingerprints on the smoking gun and it gets thrown out for some technicality I want to throw a brick through the TV screen. 

Noel

 

Edited September 22, 20214 yr by birdguy

3 minutes ago, birdguy said:

  He/she will know they are defending a serial killer-rapist and go balls out to get him off depicting him as a poor misunderstood soul who didn't know what he was doing and deserves to be freed to continue his life of crime.

We got a a crazy adversary system from our sporting English ancestors, but it works pretty well. It's more the blood sport than pity over some poor misguided soul. (Of course, there are some "true believers" in the defense bar.) The Navy was odd among services because there was no separation between defense and prosecution; both shops were in the same chain of command. In fact, there were times on the road when I was defending one case and prosecuting another. That has since changed to avoid the appearance of command influence in favor of the prosecution. When I was with the Illinois AG, I successfully prosecuted a death penalty case. I guess that makes me a switch-hitter.

But, yeah, my career was mainly defense, then exclusively murders, and between 2011 and 2015 mostly fed meth conspiracy and a class of cases I'd rather not even bring up. it's not like Law and Order or Matlock. For the sake of argument, let's say I was pretty good at what I did. I did 25-30 murders, most of them death penalty cases. Only one of them walked, and he was the only one I am as certain as I can be was factually innocent. On the other hand, I suspect a couple of my clients who were convicted (not of murder) were factually innocent, but skated too close to the line. My longest trial--six weeks--was a federal Medicaid fraud case against a dentist and it literally came down to how much drilling you have to do to code for repairing a cavity. It was a medical judgment, but he did make a lot of money. (Lucky for me!). I had a lot of experts on my side, the feds had theirs, but I also had a lot of happy patients with great teeth.

But the jury--get this--found him guilty on odd counts and not guilty on even counts. (The feds threw like 30 counts at the guy--they always do.) In other words, they weren't unanimous, but reached a compromise. That's not how it works, but oh well. You never beat the feds.

The dentist wrote me from prison on a fairly regular basis. He got to work in the warden's wife's flower garden. He got into a fight with his cellie over a window being open or closed. (If you ever go to prison, be sure to get into a fight early to establish some cred.) When he got out, he looked back on it as a positive experience.

That was a minimum security federal prison, though. If I ever go to prison, let it be a federal one.

The closest thing to Hell on Earth I've ever seen are Illinois maximum security prisons like Menard, or, even worse, Tamms Super-Max, where Illinois executed its last prisoner. Andrew Kokoraleis was a member of the Chicago Ripper Crew. Wasn't my client, but the warden came by the courthouse and talked about the execution. It went without incident. The warden seemed oddly paternal about it, like he was proud of his boy. Any of the Ripper Crew could have been poster kids for the death penalty. Only Andrew Kokoraleis was executed though, which probably says something. Can't say I feel bad about it.

But, that was Tamms. Menard was like you see in the movies, only they never get the deafening sound right. Tamms was more like you would see in a science fiction show. Very quiet, one prisoner to a tiny, bare cell with a concrete bed, one hour a day to walk around alone in a concrete box with a bit of sky above. Lots of cameras, a central control station. Of course, most of them went nuts and it was a short trip to begin with. It was the prison within the prison system for the worst-behaved prisoners. I had the PD contract in that county (they deliberately put it in the middle of nowhere for several reasons) and for a while we did a lot of poo-flinging cases. Yup. Bet you don't see those glamorous cases on Law and Order. The judge finally got tired of Super-Max cases. i think he figured poo-flinging was all in a day's work and at least poo-flingers were not on the street. After I won a case where a Tamms inmate tried to break out, the prosecutor got the message. The defendant was the only one in his cell, the bar was damaged by a file, the file was discovered... no doubt in my mind about that one! But the prison destroyed the damaged bar after photographing it, and I made a pretty dubious motion to dismiss due to destruction of evidence. The judge granted it.

There were no more cases out of Tamms Super-Max.

In real life, trials are rare. It's like being in the military. Actually getting into combat and doing what you're trained to do means someone miscalculated. 99% are plea bargains. There's no way the system could try every case. The game is to inject enough uncertainty / difficulty into the prosecutor's life to induce the best deal you can get. Rep is a big part of that. The way I figure it, I never lost a death penalty case. But all my clients (except the one acquittal I mentioned) got life without parole. It's hard enough to convince a prosecutor to drop the death penalty. It's often harder to get a defendant to accept LWOP. And In Illinois, that means what it says. The only way you are coming out is in a box. Were they grateful to me for saving their miserable lives? Well, since every one appealed on the basis of my incompetence, I doubt it ;-) But that's the way it goes. The appellate lawyers always put that in, and it seldom works--never, in my case.

Appellate lawyers come out after the battle and shoot the wounded. Let's just say they're a rival tribe and leave it at that.

There is nothing better than a good jury trial. That drama is like on TV. That's what I miss now that I'm retired. But I didn't get the chance very often. You're only in front of a jury because you have no choice. Either your guilty client is a fool and demands a slow-motion guilty plea (miserable) or one side or the other miscalculated or--worst of all--you have the rare defendant who is actually innocent. Now, that's scary. The best thing about being a JAG is that you actually try more cases than you plead out, or at least that was my experience.

A lot of military defendants think some enlisted members on the jury (which is their option) is a good idea. Wrong. Give me a panel of officers--naval aviators, if possible--any day over one that includes some crusty senior enlisted like Noel. I can't say why brown shoes were so good for the defense, and since Sig was a Naval Air Station, that's what we had. I think the pilots had often done at least as bad and were pretty tolerant. Another great thing about the UCMJ is that there is no permanent court system. Every court is uniquely established by order of a commanding officer. I lost a trial (probably not enough brown shoes on the panel) and went from the courtroom to the convening authority and laid out my case for the convicted sailor. He agreed with me and nullified the verdict. Instant gratification.

I would rather be tried under the UCMJ than in any civilian court.

The other great thing about being a JAG was airplanes. I think I've been on most helos in the inventory--pretty interesting to look down at a postage stamp sized helo deck on a frigate and contemplate how that's going to work out. I think it's an unwritten rule that visiting JAG lawyers get the rack under that same helo deck. The Navy was using a lot of Guard C-9s. Man, those were loud. The pilots were not concerned about pax spilling their drinks, either. I recall some exciting flights. "Hey, we're 30 miles out, so I guess we should start our descent from FL300," as anything unsecured slides forward. I'm sure I've mentioned the chartered Hawaiian Airlines DC-8 flight from Sig to Manama. Explains my soft spot for classic jets. C-130s, C-5s, DC-10,... WASP had Harriers, which I got to see up close, but not ride in, of course. The one thing I never got to do was trap a wire in a COD. You get a certificate stating what wire you caught. I envied a buddy who had one of those. We'd also fly civilian. Alitalia MD-80s and once an A300. A 747 still in defunct Pan Am livery. Lap of luxury.

And here's the weirdest twist of all. My great little Sicilian secretary at Sig wound up with a fleet of MD-11 freighters in Florida! Her bio says: "Experienced Director Of Security with a demonstrated history of working in the airlines/aviation industry. Strong military and protective services professional skilled in Government, Emergency Management, Law Enforcement, Surveillance, and Counterterrorism." Who knew? Sadly, I never took her up on her offer to come down to SkyLease Cargo and play with them, and I think they retired them this year.

Of course, there were ships, too. I hated them. Everything from a flat-bottomed LST to an aircraft carrier (Saratoga). I was always lost. You don't think about that, but if you're just dumped onto an LPH you can wander through identical-looking passageways for eternity without finding your rack. Or a head. You were sort of a guest, but no one knew exactly what you were capable of, so imagine dining in a wardroom where everyone is politely treating you like a snake that is probably poisonous. The Navy is the most polite branch of service.

Sorry for rambling. I plead senility. I probably spent more time on admin discharges than courts. Sounds weird these days, but most of them were based on something that's no longer a problem. Boards pitted defense counsel against some JG with "legal officer" as a collateral duty. We had a lot of fun. If there was another JAG on board, we'd call him or her to opine on the credibility of witnesses--anything crazy thing we could think of, really, But the outcome wasn't in doubt. Again, it was about getting a General Discharge and avoiding the dreaded Other Than Honorable. We could usually do that  for the guy. Or girl. Some very interesting cases there. If it was a court, you wanted the Big Chicken Dinner, not the Duck Dinner. (Bad Conduct Discharge vs. Dishonorable.)

Defense is about mitigation, not winning.

As for defendants, no, I was under no illusions. There was one case--the celebrity pathologist Michael Baden testified for he prosecution. I was what could be charitably described as third chair.. My appearance was on file, but I was just a consultant. I confess I would not have been at all sorry to see that defendant executed, except I know waking up in prison every day with the knowledge of what he did is worse. My conscience is not troubled by being a defense lawyer, and I don't expect anyone to understand that. If it makes anyone feel better, I do have to live with bad memories of victims.

Which is probably why I prefer to remember airplanes.

I don't blame you for not wanting to be on ships, at least as an enlisted sailor.  I crossed the Pacific twice on troop ships; APAs which they probably don't have anymore.

On the way back I was I was buck sergeant, a three striper.  Once you get that third stripe you aren't *******, but one of the disciples.  I was in charge of a work detail of a half dozen Marines to help chip and repaint and repaint the engine room.  My Marines were all PFCs and Corporals.  They were working alongside seamen and petty officers who were chipping paint.  I was sitting up on the platform where the engine gauges were with the chief drinking coffee and telling war stories.  I knew then I would never choose the Navy.  Chiefs seem to be the only ones exempt from work details.

That chief made some of the best coffee I ever drank.  He just threw a handful of coffee ground into a pot of water and held it up to a steam pipe and turned the valve to let the steam in for a couple of minutes.  Then he let it sit for about five minutes before it was ready to drink.  

Noel

 

1 hour ago, birdguy said:

Chiefs seem to be the only ones exempt from work details.

No other branch of service has anything quite like Navy chiefs!