> ## Content Index
> Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.bodiesburied.com/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further.

# Lawyers Complain About Data
- URL: https://www.bodiesburied.com/lawyers-complain-about-data/
- Published: 2026-10-31T06:02:16.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-31T06:02:16.000Z
- Description: Military lawyers say their Learn Your Lawyer pages are wrong. The pages report what the government's own records say. Here is what the services publish, and what they leave out.
- Author: Jocelyn C. Stewart
- Tags: Lawyers & Students, #lawyers-students: How the system works

**This week, military lawyers wrote to us saying their Learn Your Lawyer pages are wrong. The pages report what the government's own records say. When a lawyer says an acquittal is missing, it is because the agency's published report left it out.**

Learn Your Lawyer covers 335 military defense and trial counsel. Each page is built from public court-martial records: who was counsel of record, the pleas, the findings, and the sentences. When an acquittal doesn't appear, it is because the service didn't publish it.

## What Congress Required

In 2015, the Military Justice Review Group recommended a new statute, Article 140a, UCMJ, to give victims, counsel, and the public access to all unsealed court-martial documents. Congress passed it in the Military Justice Act of 2016\. It directs the Secretary of Defense to set standards for the timely, efficient, and accurate production of records of trial, and for public access to docket information, filings, and records. DoD's December 2018 guidance gave the services until December 23, 2020 to comply.

Congress has amended the law since then. In 2019 it added the word "public" to the requirement for access to docket information, filings, and records. The law now also requires general and special court-martial records to be preserved no matter how the case ended, which includes acquittals.

The law Congress wrote is about public access. What the services built is something else.

## What We Found in the Records

**Air Force.** The [Air Force public docket](https://legalassistance.law.af.mil/AMJAMS/PublicDocket/docket.html?ref=bodiesburied.com) reports partial acquittals as convictions. If an Airman was charged with five specifications and convicted of one, the docket simply says "convicted." It doesn't say which articles ended in a conviction and which ended in an acquittal. Air Force records rarely list the charges at all in full acquittals. Records from 2016 to 2020 often leave out the plea, and the Air Force never reports plea agreements.

**Army.** The Army posts its results, on [its public docket](https://www.jagcnet.army.mil/ACMPRS/cases/docket-case-list?ref=bodiesburied.com), as PDF documents, and many of them are scanned images, so a computer can't search them. To find out what happened in each case, someone has to open the file and run it through OCR (optical character recognition), or read it by hand. We have done that for every Army Result of Trial we could open, and re-run the ones that failed the first time. Only one record in that batch was truly unreadable: an encrypted file that won't open. We are requesting it under the Freedom of Information Act.

**Navy and Marine Corps.** The Navy and Marine Corps say the least about who tried each case. Their Statements of Trial Results name the military judge but not the lawyers. The monthly court-martial reports going back to 2013 summarize results without naming counsel. The trial docket is the only public source that names trial and defense counsel, and it gives last names only. A case also drops off the docket once it is finished. The docket shows who is in court now. The results show what happened. Neither one connects the two.

Because of that, we have been pulling the data behind the [Navy-Marine Corps trial docket](https://www.jag.navy.mil/military-justice/filings-records/?ref=bodiesburied.com), including archived copies of past dockets. We match each docket entry to its completed result to identify counsel of record. This work is the reason Learn Your Lawyer doesn't have Navy and Marine Corps pages yet.

The Navy has also cited Article 140a as a reason to withhold records. In the case of Seaman Recruit Ryan Mays, charged with aggravated arson in the 2020 fire that destroyed the USS Bonhomme Richard, the Navy's Office of the Judge Advocate General denied access to all but two records already made public. It refused to release more until the court-martial ended, and then only if Mays was found guilty. A military judge found Mays not guilty. ProPublica had sued in September 2022 to unseal the records. More than three years later, a federal judge ruled that the Navy must provide public access to the sailor's court hearings and records, and in April 2026 ordered the Navy to release the 6,000-page court record by April 30\. That is what it took to get the records of an acquitted sailor released.

**Coast Guard.** The Coast Guard posts individual case filings, on [its Article 140a page](https://www.jag.navy.mil/military-justice/uscg-filings-records/?ref=bodiesburied.com), only for cases referred since Article 140a took effect at the end of 2020\. For the 15 years before that, the only public record is the Coast Guard's quarterly Good Order and Discipline reports. Those reports summarize each court-martial without naming the accused, the lawyers, or the judge. They give no location, date each case only by quarter, and list convictions only. We built the Coast Guard record from every one of those reports, plus the named cases in the filings and appellate opinions. That gives 480 Coast Guard courts-martial on the site, 2005 to 2026\. Coast Guard acquittals before 2021 are not in the government's reports, so they can't be in ours.

## Transparency on Paper

Each service can say it is complying with Article 140a. But a docket that reports a partial acquittal as a conviction, results posted as scans that can't be searched, counsel listed by last name only, quarterly reports with no names and no acquittals, and a sailor's acquittal record held back until a federal court ordered its release don't amount to the public access Congress asked for. We don't believe these agencies are meeting the letter of the law or the spirit of the law.

## What We Are Doing About It

We don't stop at the docket summary. We go to the underlying Result of Trial for each case and read the findings charge by charge and specification by specification, using OCR when the document is a scanned image. Where an appellate opinion exists, we use it too. When the record shows a not-guilty finding on any charge, the case shows as a partial acquittal, even if the docket says "convicted." For the Navy and Marine Corps, we match each completed result to its counsel of record through the historical dockets.

This is slow. It means reviewing every record systematically, not just copying what the agencies post. We will keep looking for the details in appellate records and other verifiable sources, and update the data when we find them.

## If You Think Your Page Is Wrong

Your page is only as complete as the public record behind it. If an acquittal you won is missing, it is because the service's published report did not record it. Raise it with the agency that published the report, and ask it to report findings by charge and specification, the way the Result of Trial does.

We care about the accuracy and transparency of court-martial results, and we know the lawyers who wrote to us do too.

## Explore the Data

- [How the Military Trial Results Data Was Built](https://www.bodiesburied.com/trends/how-the-military-trial-results-data-was-built/): sources and known gaps for each service
- [Air Force Courts-Martial: Data and Trends](https://www.bodiesburied.com/trends/air-force-courts-martial/)
- [Army Courts-Martial: Data and Trends](https://www.bodiesburied.com/trends/army-courts-martial/)
- [Navy-Marine Corps Courts-Martial: Data and Trends](https://www.bodiesburied.com/trends/navy-marine-corps-courts-martial/)
- [When Article 120 Cases Don't End in Conviction](https://www.bodiesburied.com/trends/article-120-acquittals-s2e1/): it leaves out Air Force cases because Air Force records rarely list the charges in acquittals
- [UCMJ and Court-Martial Changes: A Dated Timeline](https://www.bodiesburied.com/trends/ucmj-change-timeline/): includes Article 140a
- [Counsel Experience](https://www.bodiesburied.com/trends/counsel-experience/)
- [Military Trial Results](https://www.bodiesburied.com/military-trial-results/) · [Learn Your Lawyer](https://www.bodiesburied.com/lawyers/) · [Know Your Judge](https://www.bodiesburied.com/judges/)

## Sources

- [Article 140a, 10 U.S.C. § 940a](https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/10/940a?ref=bodiesburied.com)
- [NIMJ: Analysis of Article 140a, Amended and Updated](https://www.nimj.org/uploads/1/3/5/5/135587129/article%5F140a%5Famended%5Fand%5Fupdated.pdf?ref=bodiesburied.com)
- [Navy-Marine Corps Court Filings & Records](https://www.jag.navy.mil/military-justice/filings-records/?ref=bodiesburied.com)
- [ProPublica: Navy withholds Bonhomme Richard court records](https://www.propublica.org/article/navy-bonhomme-fire-records?ref=bodiesburied.com)
- [ProPublica: Mays verdict](https://www.propublica.org/article/bonhomme-richard-fire-navy-mays-verdict?ref=bodiesburied.com)
- [Courthouse News: Judge says Navy must release records](https://www.courthousenews.com/judge-says-navy-must-release-records-related-to-sailor-acquitted-of-uss-bonhomme-richard-arson/?ref=bodiesburied.com)