Smaller Navy-Marine Corps Installations: 112 Courts-Martial Together

Trends › By Installation › Smaller Navy-Marine Corps installations

Based on 112 cases · 2013–2026 · Navy and Marine Corps records · data updated October 24, 2026

Full Acquittals Were More Common at Smaller Installations

A case is contested when the accused pleads not guilty to at least one charge, either a not-guilty plea or a mixed plea. At these installations, 40 contested cases reached a verdict. In 21 of them, the accused was acquitted of all charges.

That full-acquittal rate of 52% is higher than the 34% in the Navy and Marine Corps as a whole. Another 5 of the 40 cases ended in a partial acquittal, meaning not guilty of at least one charge and guilty of another.

More Accused Contested the Charges

The plea is listed in 75 of the 112 records. Among those 75, 34 accused pleaded guilty and 41 contested at least one charge. The contested share was 55%, higher than the 32% in the Navy and Marine Corps as a whole.

Navy and Marine Corps records before December 2020 often leave out the plea. The plea figures here count only the records that list one.

Which Installations Had the Most of These Cases?

Lemoore, California, had 18 cases. Guam had 14, Rota, Spain, had 13, MCAS Iwakuni, Japan, had 12, and MCAS New River, North Carolina, had 11. These 5 installations account for 61% of the 112 cases.

Larger installations try more cases of every kind. A higher count at one base does not by itself show that a base has more of any offense.

Sexual Assault Charges Were More Common Here

The charge lists cover 103 of the 112 cases. Article 128 (assault) was the most common charge, in 34 cases (33%), compared with 30% across the Navy and Marine Corps. Article 120 (rape and sexual assault) was charged in 26 cases (25%), higher than the 16% service-wide share.

Drug charges under Article 112a appeared less often: 11 cases (11%), compared with 21% across the two services. A case with several articles is counted once under each article, so a case can appear in more than one row of the table.

Conviction Rates by Article

Article 134, the general article, ended in a conviction on that article in 13 of 15 cases charging it. Article 120 ended in a conviction on that article in 12 of 26 cases (46%). Article 128 led to a conviction on that article in 23 of 34 cases (68%), and Article 92 (failure to obey an order or regulation) in 11 of 15 (73%).

Guilty pleas also varied by charge. Cases charging Article 128 ended in a guilty plea 44% of the time (11 of 25). Cases charging Article 120 did so 14% of the time (3 of 22). The records do not say why an accused pleaded guilty or contested the charges.

Confinement After a Conviction

81 cases ended in a conviction on at least one charge. 61 of those sentences included confinement (75%). The median confinement was 6 months, the same as the 6 months median in the Navy and Marine Corps as a whole.

Sentences of more than one year were less common here: 12 of 81 convictions (15%), compared with 24% across the two services. Only 1 conviction carried 5 years or more. 20 convictions had no confinement (25%), compared with 17% service-wide.

These are adjudged sentences, the sentence announced at trial before any plea-agreement cap, clemency, or appeal. Each sentence covers every charge in the case.

General and Special Courts-Martial Compared

52 of the 112 cases were general courts-martial (46%), compared with 43% in the Navy and Marine Corps as a whole. A general court-martial can impose any lawful sentence. A special court-martial caps confinement at one year and cannot impose a dishonorable discharge.

At the 52 general courts-martial, 81% of convictions brought confinement, and the median was 1 year. At the 60 special courts-martial, 72% of convictions brought confinement, and the median was 4 months.

Punitive Discharges and Rank

A punitive discharge is a bad-conduct discharge or a dishonorable discharge for enlisted members, and a dismissal for officers. 51% of enlisted convictions here included one: 31 bad-conduct and 9 dishonorable. That is lower than the 61% in the Navy and Marine Corps as a whole. 2 convicted officers or warrant officers appear in these records, and 1 was dismissed.

Among the accused with rank recorded, 57 were junior enlisted (E-1 to E-4), 46 were NCOs (E-5 to E-9), and 2 were officers or warrant officers. Across the two services, 60% of the accused were junior enlisted, so the accused at these installations were more senior.

Yearly Counts, Rule Changes, and Gaps in the Records

Yearly totals ranged from 2 to 17. The highest count was 17 in 2018, followed by 14 in 2013 and 13 in 2017. 2025 had 2 cases, and the 2026 count of 2 covers only part of the year.

The Military Justice Act of 2016 took effect on January 1, 2019, and changes from December 2023 moved some charging and sentencing decisions. Both sets of rules depend on the offense date. The records list only trial dates, so they cannot sort cases by which rules applied. They also leave out the evidence, the plea terms, and 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.