MCB Camp Pendleton, MCAS Miramar, Twentynine Palms (29 Palms), MCAS Yuma, and MCRD San Diego constitute the Western judicial region. A small loop encompasses all five bases and 70,000 Marines in an area of about 530 miles. MCRD San Diego and Miramar are just twenty minutes apart in San Diego. Camp Pendleton is an hour up the coast in Oceanside. Twentynine Palms is inland in the Mojave about three hours east. And Yuma is three hours southeast into Arizona.
JAG prosecution and defense counsel rotate across the region as needed. A prosecutor or defense counsel based at Twentynine Palms might handle a case at Yuma, then one at Pendleton, and then have a home game. Prosecutors from the Office of Special Trial Counsel at Pendleton, Miramar, and Twentynine Palms will cover bases other than home turf as well. This creates a community of Marine JAGs who know each other well, communicate often, and work serious cases together in the trenches, in front of a small number of regional Marine Corps judges, who also cover all of these bases.
A civilian military defense counsel has to be just as versatile as these USMC counsel. The lawyer who gets into every case early, stays in contact with OSTC, and is known to the prosecutors and defense counsel across the region comes into the next case at the next base with a head start and a strong reputation. In a community of uniformed lawyers that’s this close, reputation and working relationships help a civilian lawyer make headway.
The Western region carries a heavy investigative and prosecution workload. NCIS and OSTC are always humming, even when the court-martial docket goes quiet for stretches. Pendleton is the largest and busiest. Recent court-martial dispositions from the region run across the full range of OSTC’s “covered offenses”: Article 120 sexual assault, child sex offenses, ICAC stings, indecent recording, and domestic violence, alongside the steady run of Article 112a drug cases, AWOL, aggravated assault, dereliction of duty, and orders violations. Pendleton produced one of the bigger USMC prosecutions of the last decade, the 2019 human smuggling case where a group of young Marines were charged with running illegals across the border near Campo. During wartime, Pendleton also sees a lot of AWOL cases. Twentynine Palms, Miramar, and Yuma typically see a smaller volume but the cases are similar to Pendleton’s. MCRD San Diego focuses on recruiter misconduct, which often involves alleged violations of sexual assault under Article 120, sex offenses against minors under Article 120b, and CSAM under Article 134.
Gagne, Scherer & Associates Experience With UCMJ Cases in the Western Judicial Region
Gagne, Scherer & Associates has been defending Marines at Pendleton, Miramar, Twentynine Palms, Yuma, and MCRD San Diego since the 2000s. Our work in the region covers Article 120 sex offense allegations, CSAM, Article 120b, Article 112a, fraternization, adultery, recruiter misconduct, and the full slate of OSTC cases. A sample of our Gagne, Scherer & Associates’ history in the region gives a sense of how we defend Marines there:
MCAS Miramar: LCpl Avoids Court-Martial for Article 120
A LCpl was facing a credible Article 120 allegation arising out of an alcohol-related incident. The evidence included text messages from our client to the complainant after the incident that effectively amounted to a confession. The DSO paralegal had told him to stay quiet and check back if charges got served. His family hired us instead. We started working contacts in the OSTC community right away to push for an administrative separation in lieu of charges, and we presented our client as a young Marine who’d had a bad night, tried to make amends, and didn’t deserve to have his life destroyed over it. After several months of work, the case was resolved on the terms we were aiming for. No sex offender registration, no court-martial charges, no UCMJ action at all.
Camp Pendleton: Meth Charge Dismissed on Eve of Trial During Wildfires
A Corporal tested positive for methamphetamine on a urinalysis and was charged with wrongful use. Gagne, Scherer & Associates met with the convening authority the day before trial. Wildfires were encircling the base and closing in on the area where we were meeting. We laid out our client’s prescription history and walked the commander through an analysis from a privately retained toxicologist, which was enough to convince him our client wasn’t guilty of wrongful use. The commander dismissed the charge and our client went back to his unit.
MCAS Miramar: CWO4 Cleared of Adultery and Stalking Allegations Without Disciplinary Action
A CWO4 was accused of adultery and stalking by another Marine, the husband of the woman involved. Potential sex offense allegations were in the air as well. Gagne, Scherer & Associates took control of the investigation immediately upon being hired. We protected our client from being interrogated or polygraphed by NCIS. We made direct contact with the prosecution and made sure they were getting information NCIS wasn’t going to look for, let alone pass along. We pulled the history of communications between our client, the other woman, and her husband, and we presented those communications alongside an honest account of our client’s record in the Marine Corps. The case was dropped. No disciplinary action of any kind.
Camp Pendleton: NCO Able to Retire Despite Fraternization Charges
A retirement-eligible NCO was charged with fraternization and violation of a general order and was facing court-martial. We worked our longstanding relationships with senior USMC prosecutors and negotiated a resolution that avoided confinement and kept him in the Corps. Our client retired as an NCO with full benefits intact.
Camp Pendleton: Captain Avoids Conviction and OTH on Cocaine and AWOL Charges
A Captain tested positive for cocaine and was also charged with AWOL. Court-martial charges were preferred. Gagne, Scherer & Associates negotiated a resolution where the AWOL was dropped and the cocaine charge was handled at NJP. The case was then sent to an administrative separation board. The government pushed hard for an Other Than Honorable discharge. We got our client a General. No conviction, no OTH.
Twentynine Palms: Lance Corporal Avoids Confinement and Federal Conviction Despite Two Positive Urinalyses
A LCpl tested positive for cocaine and then tested positive a second time three months later for oxycodone. The Marine Corps referred the case to a court-martial and was asking for six months of confinement. We asked for an introduction through counsel we’d dealt with on earlier, similar cases, developed civil and transparent communications, and ultimately negotiated the case down to a summary court-martial and administrative separation. No confinement. No conviction.
MCRD San Diego: Joint Representation of Two Recruiters Preserves Both Retirements
Gagne, Scherer & Associates represented two USMC recruiters charged in separate courts-martial convened by 9th Marine Corps District and tried at MCRD San Diego. Both were charged with adultery and violations of general orders covering government vehicle misuse and recruiter misconduct. One client had an additional allegation that he’d built a deck for his girlfriend during duty hours and then walked away from the job after she’d paid him for it. The other had a separate charge of an improper relationship with a poolee.
The decision-makers liked the recruiter with the poolee allegation. They didn’t like the deck-builder. So the Marine with the worse charges was the one the command liked, and the Marine with the lighter charges was the one they didn’t. Both clients were retirement-eligible. The primary objective in both cases was to protect retirement, which required keeping a punitive discharge off the table.
The prosecution moved to disqualify Gagne, Scherer & Associates from representing both clients as a conflict of interest. Both clients waived the conflict on the record. The military judge let us continue.
For the better-liked Marine, we used his good will with the unit to negotiate a pretrial agreement that preserved him from a punitive discharge. We knew from the beginning we weren’t going to get the same deal for the disliked Marine, and we built a sentencing case for him designed for different protections.
The pretrial agreement on the better-liked Marine worked exactly as written, but the military judge didn’t know the terms of the deal when he announced the sentence; he imposed a punitive discharge. He was visibly surprised when he learned how favorable the deal was.
For the disliked Marine, Gagne, Scherer & Associates built the sentencing case on his record and by minimizing the relative seriousness of the offenses. The military judge agreed and didn’t impose a punitive discharge.
Both Marines eventually retired and are enjoying life after service.
Camp Pendleton: Human Smuggling Case Reduced to SPCM With Sentence Better Than Comparable Defendants
Our client was a LCpl charged in the Camp Pendleton smuggling investigation that hit the national press in 2019. The government had referred his case to a general court-martial. The charges included two specifications under Article 134 for transporting illegal aliens in violation of 8 USC 1324, conspiracy with a civilian co-defendant, an Article 114 specification for unlawfully carrying a concealed weapon near the border, and two Article 92 specifications for keeping an unregistered Sig Sauer P320 9mm handgun in his barracks room and POV on base.
Despite it being arguably the most serious of the cases due to the addition of weapons charges, we got it taken off the GCM track and resolved at a special court-martial. That move alone avoided a federal felony-level conviction and took a dishonorable discharge off the table. He was sentenced to ten months confinement and served a little over eight. By comparison, the two Marines arrested at the border in the same investigation, who’d been charged with the same core conduct, drew eighteen months and a dishonorable, and twelve months and a bad conduct discharge.
The approach in this sample of cases is what Gagne, Scherer & Associates uses everywhere: we intervene right away, we don’t take easy resolutions that aren’t in our client’s interests, and we adapt to whatever the particular base, command, and prosecution climate is. And we deal with USMC counsel (and counsel everywhere) candidly. Diplomacy and straight talk go a lot further with Marines than posturing.
FAQs About Military Cases in The Western Judicial Region
Where do Marines from these bases go if ordered into pretrial confinement?
Camp Pendleton has the main brig in the region. Miramar has a smaller brig. Miramar’s brig holds all female pretrial inmates, regardless of which west coast base the case came from. Male inmates from the smaller bases go to Pendleton.
Who prosecutes Marine recruiters accused of a covered offense?
Marine Corps Recruiting Command is headquartered at Quantico, with two regional headquarters underneath it. MCRD San Diego runs the Western Recruiting Region and 9th Marine Corps District, which covers recruiters west of the Mississippi, plus Alaska, Hawaii, and Pacific territories. Parris Island runs the Eastern Recruiting Region for recruiters east of the Mississippi. Recruiter cases from the Western Region get routed to MCRD San Diego, with Miramar OSTC handling the “covered offenses.” Recruiter misconduct cases might concern Article 92 orders violations or TDY fraud allegations, but often relate to sexual misconduct with poolees, and it’s often the poolee cases under Article 120, Article 120b, and Article 134 CSAM that bring OSTC in.
What happens when a Marine from one of these bases gets in trouble on a deployment?
Marines from Pendleton, Miramar, Twentynine Palms, and Yuma deploy to Australia, the Philippines, and Okinawa. When a Marine gets in trouble on one of those deployments, the case will be investigated at the deployed location, with oversight from the local OSTC or Staff Judge Advocate’s office, but there will also be coordination with the home base. So you might see the command, NCIS, OSTC, and the SJA at the deployed location, plus the command, OSTC, and the SJA from the home base all involved while the case is under investigation. A proactive defense counsel has to engage with every one of those offices early and often, to maximize the chance of influencing the narrative and the charging decision; an attorney can’t afford to wait and see who takes the case after the investigation ends. Similarly but on a smaller scale, Miramar Marines whose day-to-day duties are at Pendleton will be prosecuted for covered offenses by Miramar OSTC, so Miramar OSTC runs the case and coordinates with NCIS, despite the Marine being physically located at Pendleton.
What cases does Marine Corps OSTC take to trial?
Marine Corps OSTC defers a sizable percentage of its cases. The cases OSTC keeps (known as “go forwards”) tend to involve children (CSAM, Article 120b, endangerment, homicide); allegations supported by corroborating evidence like a confession or DNA; or other allegations supported by strong evidence. He-said/she-said cases without corroboration are likely to be deferred. But “deferred” doesn’t mean dropped. Deferred cases go to NJP, separation boards, or prosecution by TSO (Trial Services Organization) counsel, also called “line” counsel, who are the base-level JAGs. The OSTC defer-or-go-forward decision is one reason we never waive the Article 32 preliminary hearing. We treat the 32 as a reasonable doubt hearing, not just a probable cause hearing. One goal is to give OSTC reason to doubt the strength of its own case, but another is to give the prosecutor the ammunition he needs to convince his boss to defer. A waived 32 forfeits that opportunity and all but guarantees a referral to general court-martial.
Gagne, Scherer & Associates: Experienced Court-Martial Defense
We’ve been handling courts-martial defense and other serious cases at Pendleton, Miramar, Twentynine Palms, Yuma, and MCRD San Diego since the 2000s. The Western region is a tight community of Marine Corps lawyers, but a civilian military with a good reputation and strong connections will be welcome.
If you’re a Marine at any of these five bases and you’re under investigation or facing charges, call us at (224) 935-6172. You’ll speak with an experienced military lawyer directly.