Fort Stewart is on 280,000 acres of coastal plain in southeast Georgia, between Savannah and Hinesville. The post is home to the 3rd Infantry Division (Mechanized), one of the Army’s most-deployed combat divisions. The terrain is flat, swampy in places, and covered with longleaf pine. Summers are brutal: high heat, relentless humidity, and afternoon thunderstorms that turn training areas into mud. Winters are mild but wet and foggy.
The 3rd ID has been a fixture of American ground combat since World War I. During the Global War on Terror, the division deployed to Iraq repeatedly, spending more cumulative time in combat than almost any other Army unit. Soldiers here train for mechanized warfare: combined operations using infantry, armor, artillery, and aviation to execute large-scale attacks and defensive operations.
Hunter Army Airfield is part of Fort Stewart and operates inside Savannah’s city limits. Hunter handles aviation assets and rapid-deployment missions. Hinesville is smaller and quieter than Savannah and exists almost entirely to support the post. Savannah is 40 miles east. Charleston, South Carolina is 90 miles north. Jacksonville, Florida is 90 miles south. Most soldiers fly into Savannah-Hilton Head International Airport.
What to Expect When CID Calls
CID doesn’t invite you in for a conversation. They route the order through your chain of command so compliance feels mandatory: be a good soldier.
The delay between notification and interview is all about ratcheting up your anxiety.
Your rights under Article 31(b):
If CID or anyone in your chain of command suspects you committed an offense, they must advise you of your rights before questioning. Those rights are stronger than civilian Miranda protections. The problem: most service members don’t invoke them because they either buy into the compliance gimmick or they think that by exercising their rights they’ll “look guilty,” not realizing they’re in the situation because CID already believes they’re guilty.
The correct response:
“I am not making a statement. I want a lawyer.”
Then stop talking. Don’t explain. Don’t clarify. Don’t ask if you should talk to a lawyer. Don’t try to seem cooperative. Invoke and stay silent.
The interrogation room:
Small, windowless, camera overhead. No clock. You’ll wait alone long enough to feel uncomfortable. This isn’t the same room they use for witness interviews. Those rooms have windows and couches to keep people comfortable.
When agents enter, they’ll start with rapport-building: small talk, empathy, reassurance. Then they shift to vague accusations: “We received a report about you.”
They’ll read your rights like a formality and suggest this is your only chance to explain before things escalate. Neither of those things is true. Your rights are your best friend and there will be much better ways to present your side of things.
Common tactics:
- “Do you know why you’re here?” Any answer helps them. The safe reply: “I want a lawyer.”
- Bluffing about evidence: Agents are allowed to lie. “We already have proof” might mean they have nothing. Don’t try to figure out what they know. Invoke your rights.
- False Official Statement trap: If you lie during questioning, even in response to their lies, you can be charged under Article 107.
- Just the tip: “We know you’re not a predator. Maybe you were just curious. Just the tip and then you stopped?” If you agree to any version of their narrative, you’ve confessed.
- Written statement: If they ask you to write out what happened, they might suggest adding an apology “to your commander” or “to the victim.” The apology gets you nothing. It becomes evidence of guilt. Confessing during questioning is bad enough. Confessing in your own writing when you’re free to choose your words and take your time is much worse.
Your phone is evidence:
Don’t bring it to the interview. If you do, don’t unlock it or enter your passcode where cameras can see. CID can’t force you to provide your passcode (it’s protected speech under the Fifth Amendment) but they can compel biometric unlocks (fingerprint, face scan) once they get authorization.
If agents ask for consent to search your phone, refuse. If they say they’ll get authorization, let them. If they show authorization in writing or say they got it “verbally,” comply but document who authorized it and when. Still refuse to unlock the phone.
What they do with your stuff:
CID makes forensic images of seized devices to recover deleted files, messages, search histories, GPS data, and app activity. They subpoena ISPs and cloud providers for network logs and storage data. Payments to VPNs or encrypted services get flagged as evidence of intent to conceal. Hash values link files to known contraband databases.
Save the good stuff before you go:
If you sense an investigation is coming, back up your data to a secure location only your attorney can access. CID allows accusers to “scroll” through their own phones while agents photograph what the accuser chooses to show. Helpful material disappears. Your own backup may be the only way to prove what was left out.
Office of Special Trial Counsel at Fort Stewart
The Army established OSTC to prosecute serious criminal cases without interference from local commanders. The office reports directly to the Secretary of the Army rather than through installation chains of command.
- OSTC’s stated mission: “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: “A military prosecution unit worthy of America’s trust; committed 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 ensure those standards apply to every accused soldier, not just to victims and the institution.
OSTC’s domain:
- Articles 117a, 118, 119, 119a, 120, 120a, 120b, 120c, 125, 128b, 130, 132, and 134
- Murder, manslaughter, domestic violence, sexual assault, stalking, distribution of intimate images, and other cases
Fort Stewart has generated serious criminal cases in recent years. Soldiers have been charged with killing their own children, shooting other Soldiers, and committing sexual assaults against subordinates. Cases have involved child sexual exploitation, domestic violence resulting in death, and serial sexual misconduct by NCOs who targeted multiple victims over extended periods.
Recent prosecutions include Soldiers sentenced to lengthy prison terms for sexual crimes against minors, including family members and children met online. Other cases involve starvation deaths, infants killed by their parents, and violent attacks on fellow service members. Child sexual exploitation, domestic violence, murder, and command-level sexual misconduct: these cases fall under OSTC jurisdiction and draw federal attention.
OSTC’s Underappreciated Value to the defense:
Most defense attorneys saw the restructuring as a threat: judge-alone sentencing, centralized prosecution, conviction-focused leadership. We saw access to prosecutors who answer to evidence and trial objectives, not to battalion commanders or installation politics.
We engage with OSTC during the investigation phase and at preliminary hearings. When favorable or exculpatory evidence exists, we don’t sit on it. We share it so OSTC can evaluate the material without the institutional pressure to move forward regardless of merit. The days of needing top cover or an accuser’s approval before dismissing or deferring a case are over.
This creates opportunities traditional trial counsel rarely had. A case that looks prosecutable on paper may collapse when subjected to independent review by counsel who care whether it will survive cross-examination and hold up on appeal. OSTC wants wins, not trials. When a case has problems, they’re more willing to acknowledge them before referral than after charges are preferred and everyone’s committed. The defense advantage is knowing which cases have those problems and how to present the evidence so OSTC sees what we see.
Defending Soldiers at Fort Stewart Since 2006
We’ve worked cases in South Carolina and Georgia for more than twenty years: Fort Stewart, Beaufort, Parris Island, Charleston, Fort Benning, Fort Gordon, Moody, Warner-Robins.
We started this firm in 2006 after four years in the Air Force JAG Corps, and we have defended soldiers ever since, including those who served in combat. During the GWOT, a significant part of our practice was defending Soldiers who deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan.
We learned early that the Army will invert your service record if a soldier becomes inconvenient. The system uses valor against you. We’ve seen it happen too many times.
Most attorneys practicing today weren’t doing this work during the wars. They entered service after the drawdown. If large-scale conflict returns, the caseload will surge again, and the system will need defense counsel who understand how war changes everything.
Q: How do you manage logistics when you travel for a case at Stewart?
We set up three separate workspaces to stay organized and responsive throughout the case.
Base of operations: Hotel room or conference space near the installation. This is where we prepare motions, review digital evidence, conduct secure calls, and meet privately with family members or civilian witnesses when we want to meet off-post.
Military defense office: We work directly with appointed defense counsel, their paralegals, and the client. This gives us access to government networks and base communication infrastructure. Most case coordination happens here.
Courtroom staging area: We establish a workspace near the courtroom, sometimes a dedicated room and sometimes the panel deliberation room when it’s not in use. This is where we meet with prosecutors, victims’ counsel, and government witnesses during breaks or before testimony. It’s also where we regroup between sessions to adjust strategy.
The three-location setup keeps confidential work separate from government eyes, prevents scheduling conflicts, and ensures we can respond immediately whether we’re dealing with command, investigators, or trial personnel.
If You’re an Officer: Article 133
Article 133 is rarely the only charge in a court-martial. Prosecutors add 133 to increase leverage for plea negotiations or to make sure they have at least one charge that’s easy to prove.
The Vagueness is its Strength
The military judge’s instruction to the panel uses words like “dishonor” and “disgrace” without defining them. Those terms have no fixed legal meaning. What one panel member considers a lapse in judgment, another treats as proof of unfitness for command. The jury decides guilt based on personal and moral opinions, not facts mapped to elements.
“Approximately” a crime is a crime
The Manual for Courts-Martial explicitly states that conduct can be unbecoming even if it only “approximates” another offense without meeting all the legal elements. This is the prosecutor’s backdoor. If a sexual assault charge looks weak, they argue the conduct was “unbecoming” at minimum and let the panel convict on that instead. The officer gets punished for something that wasn’t technically proven.
No laws were broken in the breaking of this law
Article 133 doesn’t require breaking a written law, regulation, or order. The panel can decide, after the fact, that the officer should have known the conduct crossed an invisible line. There’s no way to predict what standard will be applied because the standard doesn’t exist until the panel creates it during deliberation.
This is the “law”:
“A military officer holds a particular position of responsibility in the armed forces, and one critically important responsibility of a military officer is to inspire the trust and respect of the personnel who must obey the officer’s orders. Conduct violative of this article is action or behavior in an official capacity that, in dishonoring or disgracing the person as an officer, seriously compromises the officer’s character, or action or behavior in an unofficial or private capacity that, in dishonoring or disgracing the officer personally, seriously compromises the person’s standing as an officer. This article includes misconduct that approximates, but may not meet every element of, another enumerated offense. An officer’s conduct need not violate other provisions of the UCMJ or be otherwise criminal to violate Article 133. The gravamen of the offense is that the officer’s conduct disgraces the officer personally or brings dishonor to the military profession in a manner that affects the officer’s fitness to command the obedience of the officer’s subordinates so as to effectively complete the military mission. The absence of a ‘custom of the service,’ statute, regulation, or order expressly prohibiting certain conduct is not dispositive of whether the officer was on sufficient notice that such conduct was unbecoming.”
That’s what the judge reads to the panel to guide them. It’s what the judges uses to guide the verdict in a judge-alone case. If you read it and don’t understand it, now you see the power of the Article from the prosecutor’s point of view. The instruction is deliberately circular, self-referential, and impossible to apply consistently. “Dishonor” is defined by “disgrace,” which is defined by whether conduct “seriously compromises” something undefined. The panel is told to decide whether the officer was “on sufficient notice” that conduct was unbecoming, even if no rule, regulation, or custom prohibited it.
So how do you defend yourself against this gibberish? If the facts are on your side, great. Make sure your attorney gets those facts to the prosecutor long before they decide to send your case to a court-martial, ideally even before there’s a preliminary hearing. But as said, Article 133 isn’t commonly used as the basis to court-marital someone. It usually comes with other charges. So the real goal in most of these cases is to demonstrate as soon as possible that the other charges won’t survive at trial. If the prosecution has doubt about winning on the main charges, resolving the 133 with a gentler disposition becomes a viable option. This requires your attorney to establish communication with the prosecution very early in the case, to create a credible and trustworthy relationship.
Q: How do you stay connected with your clients during a case?
Most firms use chatbots, answering services, and offshore call centers to create the illusion of access without requiring lawyers to actually be available. It’s a cost-control tactic disguised as client service. Lawyers who use flat fees get particularly protective of their time because they can’t bill for communication. So they pay to put barriers between themselves and their clients.
We don’t operate that way. Your initial call or email goes directly to a senior UCMJ attorney’s cell phone or inbox. We reply to our own messages. We text with clients. No robots, no operators wearing headsets, no chatbot pop-ups asking if you’re still there.
That doesn’t mean we’re awake at 3 a.m. waiting for the phone to ring. It means our availability is pegged to the needs of the case and the client. If a crisis develops, we neutralize it when it happens. If that means stepping away from Easter brunch or taking a call during a run, that’s what the work requires.
Criminal defense is urgent and intimate. Cases don’t happen from 9 to 5. The attorney handling your case needs to be reachable when things happen, not when it’s convenient for their schedule. The concept of “work/life” balance doesn’t apply.
The work requires us to communicate effectively with people at every level, whether enlisted, NCOs, company-grade officers, field-grade officers, or flag officers, but once the case begins, rank disappears. A private facing a dishonorable discharge loses everything. A colonel facing the same outcome loses everything. The work is identical. The urgency is identical. We treat them identically.
That level of trust starts the first time you visit this site. It continues through every phase of representation. Communication isn’t just a service we provide. It’s how we work. The lawyer you speak with during the consultation is the lawyer who will handle your case. When you call, text, or email, you’re reaching the person who knows your file, understands your situation, and can act immediately.
We’ve spent two decades defending service members in crisis. The work requires camaraderie, not corporate distance. If you can’t reach your lawyer when you need them, you don’t have a lawyer; you have a billing arrangement.
Free Case Review for Fort Stewart Service Members
If you are stationed at Fort Stewart 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 Stewart and throughout Georgia and South Carolina (including Fort Benning, Fort Gordon, Hunter Army Airfield, Beaufort, Parris Island, and Charleston) for more than twenty years and understand how OSTC cases are investigated and prosecuted in this region.