NOTE: Our focus is on courts-martial and UCMJ defense for current Marines facing disciplinary action under military law. This legal process is separate from the civil lawsuits connected to water contamination at Camp Lejeune. Many search results for Camp Lejeune focus on those lawsuits, which belong to a different legal system and do not apply to active-duty military justice. Military members interested in retaining the services of a civilian lawyer for a UCMJ case should read on.
Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune is one of the largest military installations on the East Coast. Located in Jacksonville, North Carolina, it serves as a central hub for Marine Corps training, deployment, and operations. The base spans over 240 square miles and includes more than 14 miles of shoreline along the Atlantic. It supports a full range of ground, air, and amphibious units.
The base is home to II Marine Expeditionary Force, which includes multiple major commands and thousands of active-duty Marines and sailors. Many tenant units also operate at Camp Lejeune, including Marine Logistics Command, Marine Corps Installations East, and elements of Navy Medicine. The base also works closely with nearby Marine Corps Air Station New River and Marine Corps Air Station Cherry Point.
Camp Lejeune plays a key role in military readiness and joint operations. The surrounding area includes beaches, forests, and training zones that allow for year-round exercises and coordination between branches. Units at Camp Lejeune deploy around the world and often return to the base for reset and retraining. The legal command at Camp Lejeune also handles a high volume of UCMJ cases due to the size and complexity of the installation.
Because of Camp Lejeune’s size and mission, the base is very active for significant UCMJ actions. Camp Lejeune is also very active when it comes to placing Marines in the brig for pretrial confinement, so coordinating with a civilian military lawyer early in the case is essential.
We are former United States Air Force, not Marine Corps. That fact is plain from our site, and we do not try to cover it up. We are proud of our Air Force service. The most important thing is that the Uniform Code of Military Justice applies across every branch: on land, at sea, and in space.
For more than twenty years, we have defended Marines under the UCMJ at every major installation, with a steady flow of cases at Lejeune. We stay fluent in Marine Corps culture and climate, and we work directly with defense counsel in the USMC JAG community to integrate effectively when we represent Marines. We are not Marines. What we do is show respect for the Corps and for ourselves by staying fit, disciplined, and ready to stand in court beside Marines.
Our Firm’s History at Camp Lejeune
Our work across the Carolinas is not theoretical; it is foundational. We frequently do cases at installations across North and South Carolina: Camp Lejeune, Cherry Point, Seymour Johnson, Pope Airfield, Fort Bragg, Joint Base Charleston, Parris Island, and MCAS Beaufort. The Carolinas have been a home-away-from-home for a long time. Our caseload here focuses on the serious end of the spectrum, encompassing Article 120 Sexual Assault, Article 133 Conduct Unbecoming an Officer, and complex Article 120b/134 matters involving minors.
Experience Over Proximity: Why the “Local Guy” Isn’t Always the Best Choice
The military law firms in North Carolina and South Carolina are generally qualified, but the question is what they truly bring to your case. We left the Air Force as full-time trial lawyers in 2006, not retired administrators. Since 2001, we have been in military and federal criminal courtrooms nonstop, trying General Courts-Martial at every major Marine installation worldwide.
The Warfighting Mindset: The Department of War has returned to a warfighting focus. Our approach reflects that same ethos. We are not about limiting our practice to a convenient circumference from our driveway; we are about showing up for battle wherever it is.
For UCMJ cases, the location of your brick-and-mortar office is irrelevant. What matters is experience, skill, wisdom, and presentation.
The Travel Reality: Most real UCMJ lawyers, whether in uniform or not, have to handle a big caseload from the road. While bringing us to trial adds travel costs (a few thousand dollars), saving money by hiring someone just because they are close can backfire. Attorneys from Raleigh will charge travel costs too; they are not commuting five hours a day to Camp Lejeune, on top of spending 10 to 12 hours doing battle in the courtroom.
Our Added Value: A huge benefit of hiring our firm is that you get two senior litigators for the price of one. Each attorney has over 20 years of military trial experience. We have handled General Courts-Martial through five presidential administrations, in natural disasters and the pandemic, and across all branches of military service stateside and overseas.
Cowardice Codified: Unauthorized Absence (AWOL) and Desertion
For a high-deployment base like Camp Lejeune, unauthorized absence is treated as a severe betrayal of the warfighting mission. Walking away at any point is a grave mistake, but walking away from a deployment is seen as pushing another Marine into your place to get killed. Leaving after deployment orders are issued is viewed as evasion of combat duty and will be prosecuted harshly.
Warning: The OTH Upgrade Myth
Some people grossly miscalculate the cost of going AWOL, assuming they will be administratively separated with an Other Than Honorable (OTH) discharge that can be upgraded later. This is a terrible, costly myth that has destroyed countless careers. There is no realistic path to change it. Best case scenario, receiving a permanent OTH instead of jail time is the leniency you will get.
Consult Our Definitive AWOL Resource
If you are AWOL, the clock is running and the risks of permanent damage are high. For the definitive guide on the legal difference between AWOL and Desertion, mitigation strategies, and the required steps for coordinating your return to military control, please see our comprehensive AWOL/Desertion Topic Page.
A Marine Defendant’s Pocket Guide to the Mistake of Fact Defense:
- Definition: A defense based on an honest, reasonable belief that the other person consented.
- Reasonableness: Judged by what a sober, careful person would have believed at the time.
- Alcohol: Your own intoxication doesn’t make an unreasonable belief seem reasonable. Their consumption is highly relevant.
- Blackouts: A blackout means no memory, not unconsciousness. A blackout is a much better fact in a case file than a passout.
- Vomiting: Once someone is sick or disoriented, continued activity is not reasonable, even if she says and seems fine.
- Relationships: Consent must exist each time there’s sexual activity, even in marriages or long partnerships.
- “Birthday Present” Cases: Even a generous act of giving at dawn can be seen as sexual assault.
- Age: A reasonable belief in age must rest on available facts, not hope or assumption.
- Mutual Intoxication: Both drunk isn’t equal; the accused is held to a sober standard.
- Purpose: The law protects genuine misunderstandings, not carelessness or denial.
The Discipline of Awareness
The courtroom rewards the mind that can hold multiple realities at once. Trial work is not theater; it’s controlled attention under pressure. The best military lawyers develop a kind of sustained omniscience, a constant recalibration of every variable in the room.
They read the witness for truth in hesitation and tone. They register the panel’s and judge’s micro-expressions (fatigue, irritation, curiosity) and adjust accordingly. They hear objections before they’re spoken, sense the prosecutor’s rhythm, and redirect the energy without force. Even the notes sliding across the defense table are absorbed seamlessly into the flow.
This is orchestration, not performance; the capacity to track everything and reveal nothing. The lawyer who can hold that balance owns the courtroom without raising his voice.
The Hardest Cross in the Courtroom: Handling a Child Witness
The greatest danger in cross-examining a child is losing the judge or panel while gaining nothing of value. Once credibility is lost, the defense cannot recover. Child testimony provokes protective instincts, so people will be inclined, at first, to take the story at face value, but its reliability is fragile, shaped by suggestion, coaching, and the distortions of memory (like confabulation). The lawyer’s mindset must be clinical, detached, and bold in equal measure.
Methodical Questioning:
The questioning can never look like an attack. Even when the child is consciously lying, whether on their own or under the influence of an adult. Every question must be on-target, aimed only at the integrity of the memory, the investigative process, the interviewer’s methods, sources of pressure, and hidden agendas. Problems with suggestion, coaching, or delayed disclosure are always the safe, legitimate lines of challenge.
Discipline:
The attorney must have the maturity to pivot away from distractions or emotional bait. The job is to stay calm, keep control of the room, and preserve the defense’s limited emotional capital with the panel and judge. The lawyer who remains the most composed and reasonable adult in the room will usually win the moment, not through confrontation, but through commanding the room with skill and composure, not volume and histrionics.
The Prosecutor’s Real Job: Better Percentages, Not More Wins
The most serious cases are managed by the Office of Special Trial Counsel (OSTC), a team of high-level prosecutors.
The most critical factor to understand about the OSTC is that its prosecutors are tasked to avoid losing, not just to push more cases to trial. This can increase risk aversion, and they have the professional latitude to drop a poor case that poses a real chance of an acquittal at a General Court-Martial.
Actionable Intelligence: This focus on conviction statistics is the OSTC’s greatest vulnerability. An experienced defense attorney exploits this by demonstrating, as early as possible, that the case has problems.
The New Timeline: The tactic of “pocketing” your game-changing evidence for trial has become obsolete. Your attorney must present compelling evidence to the OSTC early, before the dangers of a court-martial are hanging over your head.
The Article 32 Hearing: Convergence of Interest
The Article 32 Preliminary Hearing sets the stage for the formal showdown and is the best opportunity to pressure the prosecution into finding an off-ramp.
Dialogue: We first establish a cordial, professional line of communication with the assigned OSTC prosecutor. The goal is to help them the realities of the case that the initial NCIS or CID report might have ignored. This requires a reputation for being honest, and for being able to see the case from the perspective of the accuser, her attorney, and the prosecution.
This informal engagement sets the stage for the formal hearing, where those weaknesses are put on the record. This creates a detailed record of the problems, ideally with a negative opinion from the hearing officer, forcing the OSTC to confront the real possibility of failure. The hearing officer is required to analyze the evidence for its ability to survive the beyond a reasonable doubt standard if the case goes to trial, so the defense’s case should be focused on that, not the probable cause standard. OSTC cares about success at trial, not getting cases referred.
When faced with a case that has a real probability of failure, an OSTC prosecutor is incentivized to find an off-ramp, often resulting in the case being dismissed, negotiated down to a non-criminal resolution, or deferred for lesser action.
None of this is possible if you waive your essential right to an Article 32 hearing.
Q: Why is Article 133 (Conduct Unbecoming) considered an almost unbeatable threat to an officer?
A: Some call it a “catch-all” charge because it’s so adaptable. Its power comes directly from its extreme ambiguity. We prefer to say Article 133 operates like a “wraith” of an accusation; it has no specific shape. Guilt is not determined by a violation of a specific written rule, but by the subjective personal and moral opinions of the jury members. What one person considers a minor failing, another might see as a career-ending disgrace. Your lawyer must confront this floating standard of guilt directly.
How can unscrupulous prosecutors use Article 133 as a “backdoor” to secure a conviction?
A: The law itself grants prosecutors two massive strategic advantages:
- “Almost a Crime” Is Enough: The charge includes misconduct that only “approximates” another crime without meeting all the legal elements. This serves as a backdoor to secure a conviction on a weak sexual assault case or fraud matter.
- No Rules Required: It does not require you to violate any written law or regulation. The jury is empowered to decide, after the fact, that you should have known your conduct crossed an unwritten line.
The Test of Competence: Vetting Your Civilian UCMJ Lawyer
Many service members allow lawyers to respond with misleading marketing spin instead of hard facts. We believe in transparency, not bullshit. Here are the fraudulent claims to watch for.
Q: Should I trust a firm that advertises a 95% “success rate”?
A: No. Great example of how numbers don’t lie on their own but they can be made to lie. Those statistics are fraudulent and a marketing gimmick. They achieve this by “redefining victory,” hoping you’ll confuse a case that has any outcome short of a catastrophic loss as being a full acquittal (and you can bet they’ve suffered some heartbreaking losses they won’t disclose). We provide an honest assessment of your case instead of engaging in statistical spin.
Q: How do lawyers inflate their “trial count” metric?
A: Trial count is a meaningless, LinkedIn metric and a deliberate distortion. Counting a simple, uncontested guilty plea the same as a multi-victim General Court-Martial offers no measure of actual courtroom skill. Our firm stopped tracking our trials decades ago.
Q: Would a lawyer intentionally push my case to trial?
A: This happens for two reasons. Some attorneys lack the necessary social skills or established reputation to resolve a case early. Others intentionally allow a case to proceed simply to secure a larger fee. A high count of “trials” can actually be an indictment of a lawyer’s true value and effectiveness.
Be a Prepared Shopper
Don’t ask a lawyer for his stats. Numbers are the easiest way to make the devil look honest. Anyone can frame a win–loss record, conviction rate, or “success percentage” to say whatever they need it to. Trial work doesn’t reduce neatly to metrics. Context determines the quality of an outcome. And you can’t meaningfully translate the context of all your cases in a single stat, or any metric.
Real skill lives in the shadows: the cases that never went to trial because they shouldn’t have, the ones won on paper, or the ones where the client walked away with a future intact but no record of the case was kept.
A handful of better questions:
Q: What is your strategy for dealing with the new OSTC-driven landscape?
A: The era of relying on local commander’s discretion is over. The Office of Special Trial Counsel (OSTC) operates like a specialized federal prosecution team. Our strategy is early and direct intervention. We present exculpatory evidence and highlight weaknesses in the government’s case to the OSTC before they make a charging decision. This requires a reputation for credibility and skill, which is essential for gaining an audience with the OSTC.
Q: How do you handle cases involving both military and civilian jurisdictional overlap?
A: A case that crosses into both jurisdictions requires a unified defense strategy. We immediately establish communication with both military investigators and local civilian law enforcement. The goal is to control the flow of information and ensure that actions taken in one investigation do not inadvertently damage your position in the other. It is a complex environment that demands an attorney fluent in both the UCMJ and state or federal criminal procedure.
Q: What is your approach to defending an Article 120 case that depends on fragmented memory and alcohol?
A: Our approach is rooted in forensic science, not just legal argument and blitzkrieg cross-examination. The core of the defense is to demonstrate that alcohol-impaired memory is too fragile and susceptible to contamination to meet the standard of proof beyond a reasonable doubt. We focus on meticulously dissecting the timeline and showing how fragmented memories can be unintentionally altered by suggestion or post-event information. The strategy is not to attack an accuser, but to expose the scientific unreliability of the evidence itself.
Q: Can you explain your flat-fee structure and why it is superior?
A: We use a flat-fee structure, with a separate fee for each distinct stage of a case (e.g., Investigation, Trial). The fee for each stage is all-inclusive. It covers all of our time, including every call, text, and email, and all communication we have with investigators, prosecutors, or commanders. This transparency ensures you never hesitate to contact us for fear of running up a bill. The only additional expense occurs in the rare event your case requires in-person representation, like a trial or separation board.
Call a Camp Lejeune UCMJ Lawyer Now
If you are stationed at Camp Lejeune and facing investigation or charges under the UCMJ, call us at 800-319-3134 for a confidential case review. We have represented Marines at Camp Lejeune, Cherry Point, 29 Palms, MCRD San Diego, MCAS Yuma, and around the world for over two decades.