Fort Carson occupies the high desert south of Colorado Springs, pressed against the front range of the Rocky Mountains. The post covers more than 137,000 acres and extends from the city limits into open terrain used for live-fire ranges, maneuver training, and air assault operations. Pikes Peak dominates the western skyline. Denver is 70 miles north on I-25.
The installation is home to the 4th Infantry Division, a mechanized infantry division built for large-scale combat operations. The division deployed repeatedly to Iraq and Afghanistan during the Global War on Terror, often in some of the most violent theaters of both wars. Soldiers here train on combined-arms tactics: infantry working with armor, artillery, and aviation to execute coordinated strikes across multiple domains. The mission is force projection. The 4th ID exists to deploy on short notice and fight conventional wars against peer adversaries.
Fort Carson also hosts elements of the 10th Special Forces Group (Airborne), whose operators train for direct action, special reconnaissance, and unconventional warfare in high-altitude and cold-weather environments. Their area of responsibility includes Europe, the Balkans, and Central Asia.
Colorado Springs is just outside the gate. It’s the second-largest city in Colorado, with a population pushing 500,000. The city has a strong military and evangelical presence. Focus on the Family is headquartered here. The Air Force Academy is 20 miles north. Peterson Space Force Base and Schriever Space Force Base are nearby. The city economy revolves around defense spending, tourism, and outdoor recreation.
Come to the area for the mountains. Pikes Peak, Garden of the Gods, hiking trails, mountain biking, climbing. Soldiers go to Denver on weekends. They drink in Colorado Springs. They get into trouble in both places. The elevation is over 6,000 feet, and altitude affects alcohol tolerance in ways people don’t expect. What feels manageable at sea level hits harder here.
Fort Carson has been in the news repeatedly in recent years, and not for operational success. A Special Forces soldier was arrested in a child-sex sting. Another soldier was arrested after allegations he assaulted a woman and pointed a gun at her during an argument at a local hotel. In August 2022, a soldier was arrested on CSAM charges after Tumblr reported apparent child pornography uploaded to a user account linked to his residence in Fountain, a town just south of the post.
These cases are just a sample of the range and severity of criminal conduct and allegations that commands at Fort Carson deal with constantly: domestic violence with weapons, child sexual exploitation, CSAM distribution, and other offenses that fall under OSTC jurisdiction and federal prosecution.
Our Work in the Springs
We’ve been handling cases at Fort Carson since the 2000s. We either fly into Colorado Springs and drive south past the Garden of the Gods, or land at Denver International and make the 70-mile run down I-25 through Castle Rock and Monument. Fort Carson, Peterson, Schriever, USAFA, F.E. Warren: the Front Range installations form a trail we’ve been working for over two decades.
Article 120 Defense: What You Need to Know
The brain doesn’t record events like video. It reconstructs them from pieces, feelings, and what others suggest. Every time the story is told, it changes. Trauma and alcohol make this worse. When there are gaps, the mind invents details that seem real but aren’t.
A witness can be certain and still wrong. Confidence proves nothing. Emotional displays show pain, not guilt. The panel needs to understand that feeling bad for someone doesn’t make their testimony true. Sympathy and proof are different things.
People see what they expect to see. Once someone believes a narrative, facts get filtered to support it. Normal actions get reinterpreted as warning signs after the fact. “Why would anyone lie about this?” assumes lying is the only alternative to truth. False accusations happen for many reasons: shame about what actually occurred, outside pressure to report, fear of consequences, personal advantage. Accusers also get influenced by advocates and victim counselors who push one version of events until doubt disappears and the accuser believes it herself. A witness who starts uncertain can become absolutely convinced after weeks of reinforcement.
Courtroom conduct determines credibility. Professionalism wins. The best cross-examination is conversational, not destructive. The goal is exposure, not humiliation. Conversational questions make witnesses expose the problems with their own testimony using their own words. Silence can be more effective than interrogation. Panels respect composure; they mistrust performance.
Alcohol cases offer defense opportunities. Blackouts leave genuine gaps in memory. Those gaps force the witness to admit uncertainty about what they said, did, or consented to during periods they can’t recall. Every guess or assumption is a place to challenge the narrative.
Consent and mistake of fact. An accused can raise a defense based on honest belief that consent existed. Reasonableness is judged by what a sober person would perceive, so the accused’s intoxication is irrelevant. Mutual drinking does not create mutual blame. Continuing sexual contact after visible confusion, sickness, or hesitation is never reasonable.
Consent must exist even in established relationships. A sex act on a person who’s asleep and unable to give consent can be charged as a sex crime, even if there has been precedent for it in the relationship. Every single sex act must be consensual. A person always has the legal right to withdraw or refuse consent.
Early engagement with OSTC creates leverage. Present exculpatory evidence during the investigation or at the Article 32 hearing. Waiting for trial is a losing strategy. OSTC counsel wants layups. Easy cases. Not risk. When we present favorable evidence early, they do the math.
Article 128 Assault Defense: What You Need to Know
- Words are not violence. Hurt feelings are not assault. Threats or insults by themselves don’t meet the legal standard. There must be an act that makes another person reasonably fear immediate harm: a raised fist, a weapon, an aggressive movement toward them.
- Offer-type assault is the fake punch. It’s an attempt or offer to use unlawful force that makes another person believe they’re about to be hit. No contact required. It’s the threat in motion, not the follow-through.
- Self-defense belongs to the person who didn’t start the fight. Once you become the initial aggressor, you lose that protection unless you clearly withdraw and the other person keeps attacking. Throwing the first punch almost always destroys your self-defense claim.
- Dangerous weapon means how it was used, not what it was made for. Screwdrivers, box cutters, whipping someone across the eyes with a rosary: almost anything qualifies if used in a way likely to cause death or serious injury. The prosecution will argue a coffee mug becomes a dangerous weapon the moment you swing it at someone’s head.
- Mutual combat is not a defense. When two service members agree to fight, it’s still assault under the UCMJ. The law doesn’t recognize “consensual” violence because it undermines discipline and good order. Both fighters can be charged.
- Alcohol never excuses the conduct. Voluntary intoxication is not a defense, but it can explain poor judgment, memory gaps, or mistaken perceptions. In training incidents, the key question is whether the force was intentional or part of a lawful exercise gone wrong.
Article 134 CSAM and Child Exploitation Defense: What You Need to Know
- CSAM charges escalate based on conduct. Possessing, receiving, or viewing: maximum 10 years confinement and dishonorable discharge. Possessing with intent to distribute: 15 years. Distribution: 20 years. Production: 30 years. The government charges aggressively and stacks counts to maximize exposure.
- Sting operations are complete the moment you send the message. Solicitation is asking someone (even an undercover agent) to commit a sexual offense. Enticement is trying to lure someone you believe is a minor to a location for a sexual purpose. It doesn’t matter if the “minor” was actually a cop. The defense of impossibility doesn’t apply. The crime is complete when the communication is sent with wrongful intent. Entrapment must be explored, but most stings follow strict procedures designed to defeat that defense.
- When investigators seize devices, they reconstruct your entire digital life. Physical devices get forensically imaged to recover deleted files and communications. Network data from your ISP traces IP addresses and file-sharing activity. Cloud storage accounts get searched for hidden files and access logs. Financial records and cryptocurrency transactions link you to VPN payments or illicit sites, proving intent. Forensic tools scan slack space on hard drives to recover fragments of files deleted years ago.
- Cross-examining a child witness requires total discipline. Child testimony triggers protective instincts in judges and panels. The attorney cannot intimidate or bully. Questions must address flaws in memory or investigation: leading interview questions, delayed reporting, inconsistencies. The goal is to expose problems through logic and evidence, not confrontation. Losing composure or appearing to quarrel with a child destroys credibility instantly. The attorney must know when to pivot away from lines of questioning that aren’t working.
- Reviewing traumatic evidence demands professional detachment. Defense attorneys must analyze CSAM, assault recordings, and forensic reports with complete objectivity. Personal reactions cannot interfere with identifying technical defects, constitutional violations, or inconsistencies in witness statements. This compartmentalization is a minimum job requirement. The obligation is to protect the client’s rights at all times, not just when innocence seems likely.
- Defending the accused defends the system. The client is the person accused. But forcing the government to prove its case beyond a reasonable doubt strengthens the Constitution and military justice system. In cases involving alleged crimes against children, actual innocence must remain possible until evidence proves otherwise. The job is to test every claim, every technical element, every legal definition. That’s the only way to know whether a crime occurred or whether evidence was misunderstood, misattributed, or manipulated.
This work requires professionalism and infinite tolerance for traumatic evidence. Few defense lawyers can do it well. Fewer still are willing to try.
How Lawyers Manipulate Fear to Close Sales
The verbatim quotes below come from an actual book, a bestselling manual that instructs lawyers how to sell legal services by manipulating client fear. We’ll withhold the name of the guilty party, because it’s not just this lawyer. These quotes are a symptom. Most of the legal industry operates this way.
“Build trust, rapport, likeability, and authority in a prospect’s mind BEFORE you reveal your price.”
“The trick is to build up enough value so that when you reveal your price, hiring YOU will be cheap in comparison to any and every other alternative.”
“The end results will be determined by demonstrating that your fee is much lower than the price they would have to pay if convicted.”
“They’ll realize, ‘I have GOT TO get money to hire this attorney… In fact, I’m saving money by hiring him, not spending.'”
“Your local grocery store uses ‘Saving vs. Spending’ language, and now you know why.”
“So that’s the spiel. How do you think the potential client will perceive this? It works like magic and you have to try this script.”
“What you’re doing without saying anything is starting with a much higher number that comes NOT FROM YOU, but from a third party, authoritative sources.”
“The potential client becomes anchored to the $12,000 price that you’re building up for them, step by step. You then step in to save the day, cross it out and put your minuscule retainer fee in comparison.”
“Building up the value, then coming back down to your retainer is going to cause a very different reaction in your prospect’s mind.”
“Some attorneys do have their admins talk prices so that clients won’t perceive them as the bad guy—instead, the secretary is the bad guy.”
Ok, that’s really scummy. So what’s your philosophy on pricing?
Unlike any other firm we’re aware of, we post our fees online. Transparency isn’t a tactic; it’s respect. When money is discussed openly, trust is built. Clients who know the terms before they call can focus on what really matters: whether we’re the right lawyers for the fight ahead.
Based on reports we get from the field, this is what we believe market rates are, using a flat fee model as most criminal defense firms do, as of late 2025:
Initial/Investigative Stage: Market range of $4,500 to $8,000. Our usual fee: $6,500.
Preliminary Hearing Stage: Market range of $8,000 to $20,000. Our usual fee is between $10,000 and $12,000.
Trial Stage: Market range of $15,000 to more than $100,000. Our usual fee is $25,000.
Administrative hearing: Market range of $10,000 to $50,000. Our usual fee is $15,000 to $20,000.
Travel costs for pretrial hearings, preliminary hearings, trials, and administrative boards are highly variable and billed separately, but they aren’t speculative. They will be discussed in any standard fee agreement.
OSTC at Fort Carson
OSTC attorneys at Fort Carson prosecute without command pressure. They don’t care what plays well in the Colorado Springs Gazette or what a brigade commander wants. They care about evidence and whether a case will hold at trial. That focus creates leverage points that didn’t exist under the old system.
We engage directly with OSTC counsel who understand federal prosecution standards. When we present favorable evidence during the investigation or at the Article 32 hearing, they evaluate it on the merits. Weak cases get dismissed or reduced before charges are referred. Strong cases get tried. The difference is that OSTC counsel can make those decisions without looking over their shoulder at a convening authority who wants results for political reasons.
The Army established the Office of Special Trial Counsel to prosecute serious criminal cases independently of local command structures. OSTC operates under its own chain of command, reporting to the Secretary of the Army rather than installation commanders or convening authorities.
The stated purpose 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.”
Their vision statement commits the office 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.” We hold them to both statements.
OSTC prosecutes Articles 117a, 118, 119, 119a, 120, 120a, 120b, 120c, 125, 128b, 130, 132, and 134: murder, manslaughter, domestic violence, sexual assault, stalking, wrongful distribution of intimate images, and related felonies. Our job is to ensure those principles apply to every accused soldier, not just to victims and the institution.
When the military restructured prosecution to resemble the federal model, most defense counsel viewed it as a loss. We saw it as access to decision-makers who weren’t answerable to battalion commanders or public affairs officers.
Two decades of military defense have taught us to recognize when prosecutors have room to negotiate and when they don’t. OSTC independence from command influence gives them that room more often than traditional trial counsel ever had. The key is knowing what evidence to present, when to present it, and how to frame it so the prosecutor sees dismissal or reduction as the correct outcome rather than a concession.
Call our military lawyers for a Fort Carson case evaluation.
If you are stationed at Fort Carson 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 service members at Fort Carson and throughout the 4th Judicial Circuit (Fort Leonard Wood, Fort Leavenworth, Fort Riley, and Fort Sill) for twenty years and understand how OSTC cases are investigated and prosecuted in this region.