What Was Tried at Marine Corps Base Hawaii, Kaneohe Bay, 2019–2023? 78 Courts-Martial

Trends › By Installation › Marine Corps Base Hawaii, Kaneohe Bay › 2019–2023

Based on 78 cases · 2019–2023 · Navy and Marine Corps records · data updated October 24, 2026

No Full Acquittals in Contested Cases

A contested case is one where the accused pleads not guilty to at least one charge, either outright or as part of a mixed plea. Here, 11 contested cases reached a verdict, and 0 ended in a full acquittal. Across all Navy and Marine Corps courts-martial in the same years, 29% of contested cases that reached a verdict ended in a full acquittal.

Another 8 cases ended in a partial acquittal. In a partial acquittal, the accused is found not guilty of at least one charge or specification but guilty of another. With only 11 contested cases, a few outcomes either way would change these figures.

Longer Confinement Than the Service as a Whole

Of 68 convictions, 61 included confinement. The median confinement was 11 months, compared with 6 months in all Navy and Marine Corps cases in these years. A quarter of the confinement sentences were 1.2 years or longer. These are adjudged sentences, before any plea-agreement cap, clemency, or appeal, and each one covers every charge in the case.

Sentences longer than one year were 19 of 68 convictions (28%), compared with 24% service-wide. Only 7 convictions included no confinement (10%), compared with 17% service-wide. Confinement longer than one year requires a general court-martial, because a special court-martial is capped at one year.

Assault and Orders Violations Were the Most Common Charges

Charge lists appear in 68 of the 78 records. An article is counted once per case, so a case can appear in more than one row. Article 128 (assault) was the most common charge, in 40% of cases, compared with 31% in the wider Navy and Marine Corps. Article 92 (orders violation) was next, in 31%, compared with 18%.

Article 112a drug charges appeared in 22% of cases, a little lower than the 25% service share. Article 134 appeared in 18%, the same as the service figure.

Conviction on the Charged Article

Almost every case with one of the 4 most common charges ended in a conviction on that article. All 27 cases charging Article 128 ended in a conviction on it. The counts were 15 of 15 for Article 112a, 12 of 12 for Article 134, and 20 of 21 for Article 92.

The median confinement for those convictions ranged from 7 months for Article 128 to 1.2 years for Article 134. One case can include several articles, so these rows overlap.

Guilty Pleas

Plea information is listed in 42 of the 78 records. In those records, 31 accused pleaded guilty and 11 contested at least one charge. The contested share was 26%, compared with 31% in the rest of the Navy and Marine Corps.

Guilty pleas differed by charge. Cases charging Article 128 ended in a guilty plea 82% of the time (14 of 17). Cases charging Article 92 ended in a guilty plea 70% of the time (7 of 10). The records do not show why an accused pleaded guilty or contested the charges.

Discharges, Rank, and Court Level

Of 65 convicted enlisted members, 44 received a bad-conduct or dishonorable discharge (68%). The rate in the rest of the Navy and Marine Corps was 63%. Of those 44 discharges, 14 were dishonorable. A sentence without a punitive discharge can still be followed by an administrative separation.

Junior enlisted members (E-1 to E-4) were 80% of the accused, NCOs 20%, and officers 0%. Service-wide, junior enlisted members were 64% of the accused.

A general court-martial can impose any lawful sentence, including a dishonorable discharge and long confinement. General courts-martial were 45% of the cases (35 of 78). Their median confinement was 1.6 years, and 33% were contested. The 43 special courts-martial had a median confinement of 3 months, and 21% were contested.

2017–2018 Compared With 2019–2023

The same installation had 31 cases in 2017–2018, about 16 a year. The number stayed at about 16 a year afterward. The median confinement rose from 9 months to 11 months. The share of convictions with confinement went from 100% to 90%. Punitive discharges for enlisted members went from 79% to 68%.

The Military Justice Act of 2016 took effect on January 1, 2019, between these 2 periods. The records cannot show whether the law change caused any of these changes. In groups this small, a few cases can change a percentage a great deal.

Jacksonville and Quantico for Comparison

Jacksonville, Florida (77 cases) and Quantico, Virginia (70) had a similar number of cases. At Jacksonville, 41% of cases were contested, 16 of 31 contested cases that reached a verdict ended in a full acquittal, and the median confinement was 4 months. At Quantico, 0 of 13 contested cases ended in a full acquittal, the same as Kaneohe Bay, and the median confinement was 6 months.

What These Records Leave Out

There were 8 cases in 2019, 20 in 2020, 22 in 2021, 16 in 2022, and 12 in 2023. That is about 4% of the 1,991 Navy and Marine Corps cases in those years. Records before December 2020 often omit the plea, so the plea figures use only the records that list one. These records do not show the evidence, the plea terms, or matters 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.