Inside 139 Courts-Martial at Joint Base Lewis-McChord, 2020–2023

Trends › By Installation › Joint Base Lewis-McChord › 2020–2023

Based on 139 cases · 2020–2023 · Army records · data updated October 24, 2026

Full Acquittals in Contested Cases

A case is contested when the accused pleads not guilty to at least one charge, through a not-guilty plea or a mixed plea. At this installation, 41 contested cases reached a verdict. Of those, 17 ended in a full acquittal, a rate of 41%, compared with 37% for the Army as a whole.

Another 17 ended in a partial acquittal, also 41%, meaning not guilty of at least one charge or specification and guilty of another. Army records report findings charge by charge, so partial acquittals are visible and common.

Which Articles Appear on the Charge Sheets?

Charges are listed for 134 of the 139 records. Each article is counted once per case, so a single case can appear in several rows of the table below.

Article 134 (general article) was charged in 28% of cases, compared with 22% across the Army. Article 128b (domestic violence) was also charged more often: 18% compared with 13%. Article 128 (assault) was charged less often: 25% here and 31% across the Army. Article 120 (rape and sexual assault) was charged about as often as across the service: 27% compared with 25%.

How Often Did a Charge End in Conviction on That Charge?

Results differed by charge. Cases charging Article 128b ended in a conviction on that article in 22 of 24 cases. Article 120 ended in a conviction on that article in 17 of 36. Article 134 ended in a conviction in 32 of 38 cases charging it, and Article 128 in 22 of 34.

The median confinement after an Article 120 conviction was 1.8 years, compared with 5 months for Article 128b. A single case can include a conviction on one article and an acquittal on another, so the rows overlap.

Guilty Pleas and Plea Agreements

Most accused here pleaded guilty: 97 cases, compared with 42 contested. The contested share was 30%, lower than the 35% across the Army in the same years.

Plea agreements are recorded for 90 of the 97 guilty pleas, and the other 7 have no entry. The Army records note whether an agreement existed but not its terms. Guilty pleas were more common for some charges than others. Cases charging Article 134 ended in a guilty plea 74% of the time (28 of 38), while Article 120 cases did so 39% of the time (14 of 36). The records do not say why an accused pleaded guilty or contested the charges.

Confinement After a Conviction

There were 118 convictions, and 106 included confinement. The median confinement was 6 months, the same as across the Army. A quarter of the sentences were 1.2 years or more. These are adjudged sentences, set at trial before any plea-agreement cap, clemency, or appeal, and each covers all charges in the case.

28 of 118 convictions (24%) included more than one year of confinement, a little lower than the 27% across the Army. A sentence over one year requires a general court-martial. A special court-martial is capped at one year.

Discharges, Court Levels, and Rank

A punitive discharge was part of 74% of enlisted convictions: 68 bad-conduct discharges and 19 dishonorable discharges. The Army figure for the same years was 73%. For officers, the equivalent sentence is a dismissal. 1 officer or warrant officer was convicted here, and 1 was dismissed.

A sentence without a punitive discharge does not rule out a later administrative separation.

General courts-martial, which can impose any lawful sentence including long confinement and a dishonorable discharge, made up 72% of the 137 cases with a court level listed (98 of 137). Their median confinement was 9 months, and 35% were contested. The 39 special courts-martial had a median confinement of 3 months, and 21% were contested. The level is missing for 2 cases.

By rank, the accused included 94 junior enlisted members, 43 NCOs, and 2 officers. This mix was more junior than the rest of the Army.

Who Decided Guilt?

A military judge alone decided 103 cases. Enlisted panels heard 29 and officer panels 5. Members decided 25% of cases, against 21% in the rest of the Army. Among contested cases, members heard 32 of 40 (80%).

The accused usually chooses between a judge and members. Most judge-alone cases here are guilty pleas, so the split mostly follows how many cases were contested.

Compared With Fort Bragg and Fort Hood

Fort Bragg (143 cases) and Fort Hood (147) tried a similar number of Army cases in these years. Both had higher contested shares: 40% and 46%. Both had higher punitive discharge rates: 78% and 82%. Fort Hood's median confinement was 8 months, compared with 6 months here and at Fort Bragg.

Case Counts and What the Records Do Not Show

Army trial records in this data are sparse before 2021, so 2020 has only 4 cases. The yearly counts were 52 in 2021, 47 in 2022, and 36 in 2023. Publication under Article 140a was required to start by December 2020.

The records show only cases that reached a courtroom. Nonjudicial punishment, administrative separations, and cases dropped without action do not appear. The records do not describe the evidence or what a plea agreement contained.

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.