STACKING THE DECK AGAINST THE ACCUSED
The assault of the rights of servicemembers continues with the latest act of Congress in the area of military justice. In Section 536 of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2015, Congress modified the Rules of Evidence to restrict the use of the defense of good military character for many offenses, including sexual assault offenses, larceny, housebreaking, perjury, fraud and many others. The good military character defense has been well settled law for over a hundred years. But now members of Congress, most of whom never served one day in the military and have no idea of what military character means, have taken steps to make it easier to convict our men and women of the Armed Forces just to satisfy some political agenda. It’s now up to military defense lawyers to be creative and ensure more specific favorable character traits are used in courts-martial.