Fort Campbell straddles the Kentucky-Tennessee border, split almost evenly between the two states. Clarksville, Tennessee sits just outside the gate and has grown into a full military town: strip malls, car dealerships, pawn shops, and chain restaurants that cater to young Soldiers and their families. Nashville is an hour south.
The post is home to the 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault) and the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment (SOAR), the Army’s premier helicopter assault force. Soldiers train on rappelling from Black Hawks, fast-roping into landing zones, and conducting helicopter insertions under fire. The division deployed repeatedly to Iraq and Afghanistan, often in high-intensity operations that require (then and now) the ability to move entire companies by air in a matter of hours. The 160th SOAR operates a bit differently. The Nightstalkers fly special operations missions: infiltration, exfiltration, close air support for ground teams operating in hostile territory. They’re the ones who flew SEAL Team 6 into Abbottabad.
Fort Campbell has seen its share of high-profile incidents over the years. The Soldier Readiness Processing Center shooting in 2009. Multiple cases of Soldiers returning from deployment and committing violent crimes, including domestic homicides. Drug trafficking cases tied to Clarksville’s proximity to Interstate 24, which runs straight from Nashville to the Illinois border and serves as a pipeline for heroin, fentanyl, and methamphetamine moving through the region.
Recent years have brought a surge of child sexual exploitation cases. In August 2025, a soldier was arrested on federal charges after soliciting explicit images from minors. In July 2025, a former soldier was sentenced to 12 years for aggravated child neglect after severely burning his infant and failing to seek medical treatment for five days. Other recent cases include a soldier indicted for selling sensitive military information, a soldier arrested for cyberstalking local judges, and multiple infant death prosecutions. In one case, an unconfined soldier facing child sex charges harassed another child while awaiting his court hearing.
The severity and frequency of these cases create jurisdictional overlap between military, state, and federal law enforcement. Charges can be filed in any one of three systems, or a combination of systems, and coordination between CID, OSTC, local prosecutors, and federal authorities is constant.
The Office of Special Trial Counsel operates from an office at Fort Campbell and prosecutes cases under Articles 117a, 118, 119, 119a, 120, 120a, 120b, 120c, 125, 128b, 130, 132, and 134: sexual assault, domestic violence, murder, manslaughter, stalking, distribution of intimate images, and related offenses. These cases stay local through the investigation and Article 32 hearing before moving to trial.
An Undervalued Asset for the Defense: Office of Special Trial Counsel at Fort Campbell
The Army created the Office of Special Trial Counsel to centralize prosecution of serious criminal cases and remove them from local command influence. OSTC’s stated mission is “to seek justice by independently and equitably evaluating criminal allegations and effectively prosecuting cases warranted by the evidence in the best interests of the Army community, while maintaining honest, clear communication with victims, the Army, and the public in order to promote trust in the military justice system.”
We hold them to that. Their own vision statement commits to “wise, informed judgment; skilled case management; and superior advocacy by professional, ethical, and engaged legal teams that continuously improve and actively pursue justice in accordance with Constitutional due process.”
Our job is to make sure those principles apply to every case, without shortcuts, and that due process protects the accused as much as the institution.
When the military justice system restructured itself to mirror the federal model, with judge-alone sentencing, independent prosecution authority, conviction-focused OSTC offices, many defense attorneys saw it as a threat. We saw something different: access.
OSTC prosecutors operate independently of local command pressure. They aren’t influenced by what a battalion commander wants or what plays well in the media. They’re focused on winning the cases they take to trial, not on prosecuting every case to satisfy institutional momentum. That creates openings.
We communicate directly with OSTC decision-makers who want fair outcomes, clean kills, and respond to favorable evidence when it’s presented early. Weak cases can be stopped before charges are referred, or even preferred.
It’s unusual for a prosecutor’s stated mission to benefit the defense, but that’s what independence from command influence does. The key is knowing when to engage, what evidence to bring, and how to frame a win-win argument so it’s persuasive.
25 Years of UCMJ Experience
This firm began in 2006, during the most intense phase of combat operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. We represented soldiers who had returned from deployment, or been sent back before their cases were resolved, and who faced criminal or administrative actions stemming from trauma, overuse, or the psychological toll of serial deployments.
Those cases taught us that the system will fuck you over when you become inconvenient, no matter how many battle buddies you pulled out of an IED blast. Your service record becomes evidence that you ‘knew better,’ not mitigation for what happened after you came home.
Commands across the Army still default to discipline rather than treatment, and accountability measures still ignore the damage inflicted by long cycles of deployment and dwell time that never allows recovery. We’ve watched prosecutors use combat performance as proof of criminal intent, arguing that a soldier’s ability to lead under fire means they must have acted deliberately in moments of crisis. The inverse never applies: valor is never treated as evidence of good character, only as proof of capability.
We served as Air Force judge advocates from 2001 to 2005 and opened this firm the year after. From the beginning, our practice heavily featured Army cases: AWOL, desertion, combat-related offenses, and charges tied to the psychological aftermath of war. Very few attorneys were doing this work during the height of the wars. If war resumes on the scale it did then, the military justice system will need defense counsel who understand how combat alters investigations, how commands recalibrate priorities, and how actions taken downrange (whether heroic, desperate, or reckless) can be reinterpreted as crimes when examined years later in a courtroom environment severed from context.
Why Our Firm Doesn’t Use the Word “Retainer”
In our fees, we use the word “investigative” or “initial” fee rather than “retainer.” Retainer misleads people into thinking it covers all legal services. It doesn’t. It’s only a deposit that the lawyer bills against by the hour until it runs out, then asks the client to refill. That model leaves clients exposed at the worst time in the case.
We use the term initial fee or investigative fee instead, because it actually does cover everything that happens in the first stage of representation, without exception. It includes all in-house discussions between attorneys, all contact with government counsel including OSTC, and all communication with investigators, witnesses, and family members. It covers every hour of research, writing, and evidence analysis.
If the government produces a report of investigation, that report and the evidence file are fully analyzed and discussed with the client as part of the same fee. Not every case reaches that point. Some end sooner, with administrative action such as a letter of counseling, a letter of reprimand, or nonjudicial punishment. If that happens, we help prepare the response as part of the initial fee. The initial fee is not a down-payment for services that can be withdrawn, which is what a retainer really is.
What happens if you hire a firm that uses retainers and the retainer runs out or you can’t keep up with hourly fees?
With hourly billing, the work stops when the money stops. If a client falls behind, most lawyers won’t keep going because the model doesn’t allow it: they don’t work for free.Some withdraw; others finish the case in name only, doing the bare minimum until they can exit. Either way, the client suffers.
Clients who fall behind on hourly fees don’t “start over” with new counsel, since they can’t afford to hire someone else. They fall back on whoever’s already assigned by the military. If a uniformed defense attorney is in the case, that lawyer suddenly has to take over everything, often a first-tour captain still learning the job. If no uniformed counsel has been detailed yet, as in many Army investigations, the client ends up with no lawyer at all. No one to ask questions, no one to get advice from, and no one to push back against investigators.
That’s a big reason we work on a flat-fee basis. We’re not just using different terms for the same kind of fee.
With a flat fee, each phase of the case is paid in full before it begins, so no one has to worry about running out of funds in the middle of a case. The client knows exactly what the defense costs, and we know we can see the case through. We don’t hand off cases, we don’t let finances compromise the attorney-client relationship, and we don’t let a temporary hardship dictate the quality of representation.
That’s also why we don’t offer payment plans. A flat fee only works when it’s paid in full, up front, and final. If a client pays part of the fee and then falls behind, we can’t stop working without harming the case or harming our reputation, and we won’t give less than our best effort while waiting to get paid. But it creates tension that hurts everyone. It invites embarrassment, questions of loyalty, and doubt about whether the defense still has its full attention.
And in some cases, the most critical work happens in the first few hours: a call that prevents charges, a strategy that keeps a career intact and the client out of jail. It wouldn’t be fair to ask us to deliver that level of value and then wait to see whether the rest of the fee ever arrives. The up-front model avoids all of that. It keeps the work clean, the expectations clear, and the relationship free of financial tension from the start.
Why don’t other military defense firms reveal their fees online?
It’s not just most military firms. It’s all firms everywhere, whether military or civilian.
They don’t want you to see the number before they control the conversation. If the fee is posted, you close the page out of sticker shock or call a competitor who’s cheaper. If the dollars are hidden, they get you on the phone first. Once you’re talking, they can assess how desperate you are, what you earn, and what you’ll tolerate before the price comes up.
How do they exploit the free consultation?
Sizing you up. They’re learning your rank, your years of service, whether you have dependents, whether you’re facing separation that cuts off your housing allowance or medical benefits. They’re figuring out how much financial pressure you’re under and how much fear they can convert into urgency. The case discussion is real, but so is the sales calculation happening in parallel.
The call isn’t delayed because they’re busy. It’s delayed because pricing works better after rapport is established. Once you feel like they understand your situation, the number sounds more reasonable.
Here’s the script they use, broken into steps:
Step 1: Get your rank and time in service. That tells them your base pay and how close you are to retirement.
Step 2: Add your housing allowance. If you have dependents, that number is higher, which makes the calculation more effective.
Step 3: Stack on medical and dental coverage for you and your family. Assign a dollar value to each.
Step 4: Include tax advantages. Military pay has tax-free components, and they’ll inflate the value of that benefit.
Step 5: Add life insurance through SGLI. Throw in the “value” of professional military education.
Step 6: Pad it further: clothing allowance, BX and commissary savings, even the convenience of the Shoppette.
Step 7: Multiply everything by the years you have left until retirement. If you’re at 12 years, that’s 8 more years of benefits, plus a retirement that’s easily worth over a million dollars across your lifetime.
Step 8: Present the total as what you stand to lose if convicted. The number is huge, inflated, and terrifying.
Step 9: Compare their fee to that loss. “My retainer is $15,000. You’re protecting $1.2 million. It’s not spending: it’s saving!”
Step 10: Close the deal before you have time to think. The emotional math makes the fee seem small, even when it’s not.
This is a sales tactic lifted from grocery stores and infomercials. It’s also taught in bestselling books on how to sell legal services. It works because the fear is real, the math looks authoritative, and most people don’t realize they’re being manipulated until after they’ve signed.
Here’s the uncomfortable truth: what they’re saying isn’t wrong. The cost of competent legal defense is a small investment compared to what you stand to lose. A conviction can end your career, your benefits, and your future. The math checks out.
But that doesn’t make the tactic less sleazy. It’s condescending. It’s disrespectful. And it’s beneath the dignity of former military officers who should know better than to treat clients like marks in a retail transaction. You already understand what’s at stake. You don’t need a lawyer performing emotional arithmetic to convince you to hire them.
We publish our fees because we’d rather talk about your case than play psychological games with your fear.
Our standard fees:
- Initial/investigative stage: $6,500
- Article 32 preliminary hearing: $10,000–$12,000
- General court-martial trial: $25,000
- Administrative separation board: $15,000–$20,000
The fee covers the work. Travel costs (airfare, hotel, rental car) are billed separately and disclosed in advance.
What Other Firms Charge:
- Initial/investigative stage: $4,500 to $8,000
- Article 32 preliminary hearing: $8,000 to $20,000
- General court-martial trial: $15,000 to over $100,000
- Administrative separation board: $12,000 to $50,000.
A final word on fees: make sure you understand what’s included in a “trial” fee if your case might end up a court-martial. Some firms will limit the number of days on-site that will be included in a trial fee. Any days beyond that number will be billed at a rate in the thousands per day. Some firms limit the hours covered by a trial “day” to 8, and any hour spent on base after that limit is billed at an hourly rate. Some firms don’t include travel days in their “trial fee.”
The way we do it: a trial fee covers everything. All work, all time, including travel time. All of this is set in advance. If the trial runs long, we won’t bill extra for that.
Defending CSAM Cases at Fort Campbell
As an example of how we approach cases, we can look at CSAM cases brought under Article 134. Here’s a brief guide:
CSAM prosecutions typically start with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. NCMEC receives reports from electronic service providers required by law to flag suspected content: Facebook, Google, Snapchat, Instagram, Yahoo, Microsoft. Each report gets reviewed, prioritized, and forwarded to CID or another investigative agency. Reports include hash values, file descriptions, and the IP address tied to the account.
Some cases begin differently. A repair technician finds suspected files on a laptop. A witness sees images on someone’s phone. Law enforcement discovers contraband during an unrelated search. However it starts, once CSAM is suspected, the investigation expands to every device the accused owns or controls.
Investigators take everything
Computers, phones, tablets, external drives, SD cards, USB sticks. Game consoles get seized because they support messaging and file transfers. Digital cameras, GoPros, drones with storage, camcorders. Anything that might hold a file. Even routers, smart TVs, and voice-assistant devices can be imaged if they cache data. If it has storage or connects to a network, it gets copied and analyzed.
Finding files on a device doesn’t prove guilt
The government must show the accused knowingly possessed the material. That means proving both control and awareness. Investigators interview everyone with access. They pull search histories, analyze file-sharing software, review cloud accounts and messaging apps. They look for personal documents, photos, or emails that tie the accused to the device and prove familiarity with what’s stored on it.
Challenging the “Proof”
The defense starts by attacking knowledge. Who else used the device? What else was happening on the device at the time of the suspicious activity? Check whose email was being used, who was doing some banking, who was surfing the internet. Your email, your bank, your hobbies, all around the time the contraband was accessed? That’s a problem.
Were files saved manually or downloaded automatically? Did the accused delete them immediately? Did he report them?
Hash values identify known files, but the process isn’t foolproof. Were the hash values generated correctly? Were files corrupted during imaging? Did the chain of custody hold? Did investigators exceed the scope of the warrant? Did they rely on NCMEC summaries without doing their own analysis? Errors at any step can break the case.
The real issue is always the same: did the accused know what the files showed? Where were they stored: obvious folders, mislabeled folders, or buried in system directories? Were filenames descriptive or random strings generated by the device?
Forensic Experts Will Be On Your Team
Forensic experts are essential. They help determine whether files were accessed intentionally. They check whether timestamps were altered. They look for malware or remote-access software that could explain how files appeared without the accused’s involvement. Technical analysis can create reasonable doubt where none existed before.
Improper Use of Victim Evidence
NCMEC files often include victim-impact materials from the original abuse investigation: police reports, interviews, statements from family members. These documents are hearsay. The accused had no connection to the original crime. The government can’t use third-party records to prove intent, knowledge, or motive in a possession case, and they can’t prove those things, that evidence is irrelevant to this case.
Defense counsel should move early to exclude this material. Without it, the government’s sentencing case shrinks to forensic facts: file counts, timestamps, device metadata. Stripping out the victim narrative removes much of the prosecution’s leverage. However, in cases where a deal is made, there will likely be a required wavier of all hearsay objections.
What Conviction Means
A CSAM conviction destroys everything. Dishonorable or bad-conduct discharge. Loss of all veterans benefits. Mandatory sex offender registration. Confinement up to thirty years. Lifelong restrictions on where you can live, work, and go. No coaching. No volunteering near schools. No living near parks, playgrounds, or churches. Employment options disappear. The conviction follows you forever.
Defense 101
Challenge everything. Question the CyberTip’s reliability. Examine the forensic imaging for errors. Verify the IP address actually identifies the accused. Determine whether files were saved deliberately. Assess whether mental health, coercion, or accidental exposure warrant mitigation.
Hire forensic experts immediately. Preserve anything that helps your case. Identify flaws in the investigation before charges are referred. The goal isn’t just to fight at trial. It’s to stop weak cases from getting that far by exposing problems the government can’t fix.
How the Prosecution Establishes Age in Close Calls
Prosecutors sometimes use a process called Tanner staging to argue a depicted person is a minor. Tanner staging is a medical scale that describes puberty development. It was designed for clinical use with living patients, not for analyzing photos or videos.
Experts review images and compare visible features to five developmental stages. The testimony helps determine whether someone meets the legal definition of a minor. The problem: Tanner staging wasn’t built for remote assessment. Lighting, camera angles, posture, and ethnic variation distort features. Puberty timing varies widely. Any opinion based on photos carries significant error.
Defense counsel should cross-examine aggressively. Ask about methodology and inter-observer reliability. Emphasize the lack of direct examination. Most experts will admit Tanner analysis outside a clinical setting provides only a rough estimate. Highlighting these limits reduces the certainty prosecutors try to claim.
Why We Take These Cases When Others Won’t
Most firms won’t touch CSAM prosecutions. We don’t screen by offense type. Everyone accused deserves competent defense. Our job is to protect constitutional rights, force the government to meet its burden, and ensure sentencing is proportional to the conduct if there’s a conviction. Defending these cases requires discipline, technical skill, and a commitment to fairness that isn’t conditional on public approval.
Talk to us about your cast at Fort Campbell. Real lawyers, free call and conversation.
If you are stationed at Fort Campbell and facing investigation, court-martial, or administrative action under the UCMJ, call us at 800-319-3134 for a confidential case review. We have defended Soldiers at Fort Campbell, Fort Hood, Fort Bliss, Fort Riley, and other Army posts for twenty years and understand how OSTC cases are investigated and prosecuted.