Can I afford to hire a civilian attorney to represent me in my court-martial?

A better question might be: can you afford not to hire a civilian attorney? The prosecutor’s office is sparing no expense to put you behind bars. Every branch of service is pouring funding into training its prosecutors to achieve a better conviction rate. Prosecution is also a team-sport: in addition to the local base prosecutor, known as “trial counsel”,nearly every jurisdiction also has a “senior trial counsel” who assists the “trial counsel” in prosecuting. Beyond the “senior trial counsel” is the “chief of military justice”, usually an O-4 (although in some cases they are a senior O-3 or even an O-5 who is the senior prosecutor for the command. Often “chiefs of justice” are steadily supervised by the “deputy staff judge advocate”, that is most often an O-5. The Army and the Air Force have created a new position known as the Special Victim Prosecutor (SVP) as a response to negative attention sexual assault has had from Congress and the media. Early indications are that the other services will be required to create their own version of the SVP to address Congressional concerns. The budget for sexual assault prosecution is seemingly limitless; the military is going to great lengths to appease the concerns of Congress that the military takes seriously the “epidemic” of sexual assault.

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