Contested Air Force Cases in 2025: Verdicts and Sentences
The records hold 71 Air Force courts-martial from 2025 in which the accused pleaded not guilty to at least one charge.
Understanding Trends in Military Practice · 7 min read
Trends › By Year › Air Force 2025, contested
Short answer: The records hold 71 Air Force courts-martial from 2025 in which the accused pleaded not guilty to at least one charge. 32 of them ended in a full acquittal (45%), lower than the 50% for contested Air Force cases in 2020–2025, and 71% of convicted enlisted members received a punitive discharge, against 55% in the wider period.
Discharges Were More Common After a Conviction
The largest gap between 2025 and the wider period is in punitive discharges. Among 35 enlisted members convicted in contested 2025 cases, 25 received a bad-conduct or dishonorable discharge (71%). Across contested Air Force cases in 2020–2025, the share was 55%.
15 of those 25 discharges were dishonorable. A dishonorable discharge is the most severe discharge an enlisted member can receive, and only a general court-martial can adjudge it. A bad-conduct discharge is the less severe punitive discharge.
Officers follow a separate rule. The officer equivalent of a punitive discharge is a dismissal. 4 convicted officers or warrant officers appear in the 2025 records, and all 4 were dismissed. A sentence without a punitive discharge does not rule out a later administrative separation, which these records do not track.
How Many Contested Cases Ended in Full Acquittal?
A case counts as contested when the accused pleads not guilty to at least one charge, either a full not-guilty plea or a mixed plea. All 71 cases in this group meet that definition and reached a verdict.
32 of the 71 ended with the accused acquitted of all charges, a 45% full-acquittal rate. The rate for contested Air Force cases in 2020–2025 was 50%. Only 2 cases split the charges, with a guilty finding on one and a not-guilty finding on another.
That low split count reflects how the Air Force reports results. Its records give one verdict per case, so a partial acquittal appears only when an appeals opinion reports it. The 2 split cases are a floor, not a full count.
Members and Military Judges
The accused usually chooses whether a military judge alone or a panel of members decides guilt. In 2025, members heard 56 of the 71 contested cases (79%): 43 enlisted panels and 13 officer panels. A military judge alone decided the other 15. The members share for 2020–2025 was 75%.
Full acquittals came in 24 of 56 contested members cases (43%) and in 8 of 15 contested judge-alone cases (53%). The judge-alone group is small, so a few cases in either direction would move that rate by several points.
Confinement Terms
Of 39 convictions, 35 included confinement. The median confinement was 1 year, the same as the 1 year for contested Air Force cases in 2020–2025. A quarter of the confinement terms were 2.5 years or longer.
Longer sentences were more common in 2025. 16 of the 39 convictions carried more than one year of confinement (41%), compared with 35% for the wider period. 6 convictions brought 5 years or more (15%), against 9%. At the other end, only 4 convictions carried no confinement at all (10%), compared with 22% across 2020–2025.
These are adjudged sentences: what the court-martial imposed at trial, before any plea-agreement cap, clemency, or appeal. Each sentence covers every charge in the case, not one offense alone.
| Adjudged confinement | Convictions | Share here | Share, contested Air Force cases in 2020–2025 |
|---|---|---|---|
| No confinement | 4 | 10% | 22% |
| Under 6 months | 8 | 21% | 29% |
| 6 months to 1 year | 11 | 28% | 14% |
| More than 1 year, under 5 years | 10 | 26% | 26% |
| 5 years or more | 6 | 15% | 9% |
Domestic Violence Charges Appeared More Often
The charge lists cover 68 of the 71 cases. Each article counts once per case, so a case with three articles appears in three rows of the table.
Article 120 (rape and sexual assault) was the most common charge, in 20 cases (29%), about the same as the 31% for 2020–2025. Article 128b (domestic violence) was charged in 15 cases (22%), compared with 11% in the wider period. Article 120b (rape and sexual assault of a child) was also charged more often: 13% against 9%.
Other articles appeared less often. Article 112a (drug offenses) was charged in 13% of 2025 cases, compared with 18%. Article 128 (assault) was charged in 6%, compared with 21%.
| UCMJ Article | Cases | Share here | Share, contested Air Force cases in 2020–2025 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Art. 120 Rape and sexual assault | 20 | 29% | 31% |
| Art. 128b Domestic violence | 15 | 22% | 11% |
| Art. 134 General article | 10 | 15% | 17% |
| Art. 112a Wrongful use, possession of controlled substances | 9 | 13% | 18% |
| Art. 120b Rape and sexual assault of a child | 9 | 13% | 9% |
| Art. 92 Failure to obey order or regulation | 8 | 12% | 14% |
| Art. 128 Assault | 4 | 6% | 21% |
| Art. 107 False official statements | 4 | 6% | 4% |
Convictions and Sentences by Charge
Air Force records list charges mainly for convictions and rarely list them in full acquittals. For that reason the table below gives conviction counts and sentences, not conviction rates.
Of the 20 cases charging Article 120, 7 ended in a conviction on that article, with a median confinement of 2.5 years. Article 128b produced 10 convictions out of 15 cases charging it, with a median of 1.5 years. Convictions under Article 134 (the general article) brought a median of 7 months, and convictions under Article 112a brought a median of 3 months.
| Article | Cases charging it | Convicted of it | Median confinement when convicted of it |
|---|---|---|---|
| Art. 120 Rape and sexual assault | 20 | 7 | 2.5 years |
| Art. 128b Domestic violence | 15 | 10 | 1.5 years |
| Art. 134 General article | 10 | 6 | 7 months |
| Art. 112a Wrongful use, possession of controlled substances | 9 | 3 | 3 months |
Court Level, Rank, and Location
A general court-martial can impose any lawful sentence, including long confinement and a dishonorable discharge. A special court-martial caps confinement at one year and cannot impose a dishonorable discharge. In 2025, 46 of the 71 contested cases were general courts-martial (65%), with a median confinement of 1.5 years. The other 25 were special courts-martial, with a median of 2 months.
By rank, the records show 43 junior enlisted members, 22 NCOs, and 6 officers. The 2025 group is more junior than contested Air Force cases in 2020–2025.
JB Pearl Harbor-Hickam, Hawaii, had the most cases (6), followed by Nellis AFB, Nevada (4), Shaw AFB, South Carolina (3), Ramstein AB, Germany (3), and Misawa AB, Japan (2). These five account for 25% of the 71 cases. Larger installations try more cases of every kind, so a high count is not a measure of local conduct.
New Rules and What the Records Omit
Since December 28, 2023, special trial counsel rather than commanders decide whether to prosecute covered offenses such as sexual assault, domestic violence, and murder. When every guilty finding is for an offense after December 27, 2023, the military judge sets the sentence under new sentencing parameters. Both rules depend on the offense date, so 2025 trials include cases under the old rules and the new ones.
The records give trial dates, not offense dates. They do not describe the evidence, they do not report plea agreements, and they leave out matters handled by nonjudicial punishment or administrative separation.
Dates and sources for the law changes mentioned here: UCMJ change timeline.
How We Counted
Air Force courts-martial with a trial date in 2025, a not-guilty or mixed plea, and a result posted (71 cases), compared with all such cases in 2020–2025.
Source: public court-martial records (Article 140a, UCMJ) in Military Trial Results, data updated October 24, 2026. Definitions, sources, and known gaps: how this data was built. Errors: content@bodiesburied.com.
Related Analysis
- Air Force Courts-Martial: Data and Trends (hub)
- By Year (hub)
- Air Force Acquittals in 2022: How Many Contested Cases Ended Not Guilty?
- Air Force Acquittals in 2024: How Many Contested Cases Ended Not Guilty?
- Contested Air Force Cases in 2020: Verdicts and Sentences
- Contested Air Force Cases in 2021: Verdicts and Sentences
- How Did Contested Air Force Courts-Martial End in 2023?
- Army Acquittals in 2022: How Many Contested Cases Ended Not Guilty?
- Army Acquittals in 2023: How Many Contested Cases Ended Not Guilty?
- Search every case in Military Trial Results (members)
About the author. Jocelyn C. Stewart is a retired Army JAG with more than 24 years of trying courts-martial and more than 200 jury trials. She hosts Where All The Bodies Are Buried and runs the Law Office of Jocelyn C. Stewart. This analysis is for education and information only. It is not legal advice, and every case is different.