Inside 39 Courts-Martial at Fort Knox, 2021–2023

Trends › By Installation › Fort Knox › 2021–2023

Based on 39 cases · 2021–2023 · Army records · data updated October 24, 2026

Full Acquittals in 6 of 10 Contested Cases

In 10 cases the accused pleaded not guilty to at least one charge, which makes a case contested, and all 10 reached a verdict. Of those, 6 ended in a full acquittal, meaning not guilty on every charge. That is 60%, compared with 37% in the rest of the Army.

Another 4 contested cases ended in a partial acquittal: not guilty of at least one charge or specification, but guilty of another. Army results list findings charge by charge, so partial acquittals appear often in Army data. With only 10 contested cases, each verdict changes the percentages by a large amount.

Most Cases Ended in a Guilty Plea

In all, 29 accused pleaded guilty and 10 contested at least one charge. The contested share was 26%, lower than 34% in all Army cases in those years.

Of the 29 guilty pleas, 28 are recorded with a plea agreement and 1 has no entry. Army records say whether an agreement existed, not what it contained.

Most of the Accused Were NCOs

NCOs made up 69% of the accused at Fort Knox. Officers were 15%, and junior enlisted soldiers (E-1 to E-4) were only 15%. Across the rest of the Army, junior enlisted soldiers were 57% of the accused.

There were 5 convicted officers or warrant officers, and 1 was dismissed. Dismissal is the officer equivalent of a punitive discharge.

Orders Violations and Recruit Offenses

Every case has a charge list, and a case with several articles appears under each. Article 92 (failure to obey order or regulation) was the most common charge, in 13 cases (33%), compared with 15% in the rest of the Army.

Article 93a (prohibited activities with recruit or trainee) was charged in 5 cases (13%), compared with 1% elsewhere. Assault and sexual assault were charged less often. Article 128 (assault) and Article 120 (sexual assault) were each charged in 18% of cases, compared with 31% and 25% Army-wide.

Conviction on the Top Charges

11 of the 13 cases charging Article 92 ended in a conviction on that article (85%), with a median confinement of 4 months. 7 of 8 Article 134 (general article) cases ended in a conviction, also with a median of 4 months. A case can include a conviction on one article and an acquittal on another, so the rows overlap.

How Much Confinement?

Of 33 convictions, 26 included confinement (79%). The median was 5 months, lower than the 6 months median in all Army cases. A quarter of those sentences were 1.2 years or longer.

7 of 33 convictions (21%) included more than one year of confinement, compared with 27% across the Army. 21% of convictions included no confinement, compared with 17%. These are adjudged sentences, before any plea-agreement cap, clemency, or appeal, and they cover every charge in the case.

Punitive Discharges Lower Than the Army Rate

For enlisted soldiers, a punitive discharge is a bad-conduct or dishonorable discharge. 15 of 28 convicted enlisted members received one: 11 bad-conduct and 4 dishonorable. The Army share in those years was 73%.

A sentence without a punitive discharge does not rule out an administrative separation later, which these records do not capture.

Forum, Court Level, and Peers

The accused usually chooses whether a military judge alone or a panel of members decides guilt. Members heard 10% of cases with the forum listed: 3 enlisted panels and 1 officer panel. A judge alone heard the other 35. Among contested cases, members heard 4 of 10 (40%). General courts-martial, which can impose long confinement and a dishonorable discharge, made up 79% of cases (31 of 39).

Fort Polk and Fort Sill tried similar numbers of cases. At Fort Polk, 9 of 14 contested cases that reached a verdict ended in a full acquittal, the median confinement was 1.3 years, and the punitive discharge share was 96%. At Fort Sill, those figures were 4 of 10, 6 months, and 77%. Fort Knox had the lowest discharge share of the three, at 54%.

Timing and Limits

The cases are from March 2021 through December 2023: 14 in 2021, 11 in 2022, and 14 in 2023. Together they are 3% of the 1,498 Army courts-martial in those years. The services were required to begin publishing trial records under Article 140a by December 2020, and this data has few Army records before 2021.

The records give trial dates, not offense dates, and omit the evidence, plea terms, and anything handled by nonjudicial punishment or administrative separation.

Dates and sources for the law changes mentioned here: UCMJ change timeline.

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.