Any former or current JAGs?

[FrankGator627]

I'm a 2L at UF and have been entertaining the idea of applying to the Navy as a JAG officer. I was wondering if I could get some information/experiences from someone that is or was a JAG officer.

Thanks.

[demosthenes]

Not currently a JAG but starting the AF JAG program in January. I have training for 3 months in Montgomery, AL before going to my assignment base.

The two best JAG programs are the AF and Navy. I think the Navy has better domestic bases since you are generally located by the water but the AF has more choices and IMO better overseas selections.

Obviously can't help you with the experience part though.

[GatorAbe7]

Never a JAG myself, but in the four years I worked in the USAF I spent a considerable amount of personal and professional ‘work’ time with JAGS. I noticed two general types: The lawyers and the officers. The lawyers being lawyers first and officers second, the officers vice-versa. The old joke that goes “what do you call the doctors and lawyers who finish at the bottom of their class?...Sir!" applies more to the officers than lawyers.

The lawyers generally gravitated toward the court-martial side of things, whether as judges or ADC (area defense council.) They tended to view criminal cases more in terms of the involved individuals rather than, (like the officers), in terms of the Air Force. For instance, prosecutor lawyers tended to cut deals quickly with the idea of getting the defendant quickly back on track and on with his life. On the other hand, the officers treated criminal cases with the military’s reputation in mind, and as prosecutors, they dragged the cases out if it meant they could get tougher sentences and make the military look strict. The big downside was that too many officers prosecuted too hard, thinking that racking up strict sentances helped their career.

The lawyers tended to view their military career in terms of what it meant to their law career. This is because the lawyers were almost always educated independently at top universities and joined the military as a means of trying something different. The two I knew as friends had ended stints at two of the East coast’s top ‘trial lawyer’ firms to join the military for a third of what they were making. They were far smarter and more calculating when it came to litigating, and thus, had unusually high acquittal rates when it came time to working as defense councils. Both had been admitted to Harvard, Yale, and such (I think they graduated from Berkely and Virginia.) They were apt to up and leave the military for higher paying firm jobs in the civilian sector.

The officers were tied down to the military, and viewed their legal work in terms of what it meant to be an officer in the military. Every officer I knew had received their education through the military, meaning they had often attained rigid military mindsets via the academies and had 10-12 year service commitments due to having their education paid for by the military. They tended to populate the highest JAG commands because, unlike the lawyers, they aspired for high ranks and full military careers.

Political note: a lot of officers eventually took the easy JAG jobs (such as contracting), under the guise of “diversifying” their JAG career, because court-martialing was too competitive for them, and when they were called upon to court-martial, they either got burned by the lawyers, or called up a lawyer to co-pilot their case. I heard this stated about a thousand times.

I would say the lawyer to officer ratio is 1:4.

There are some notable JAG jobs outside of court-martialing. I knew a Colonel whose job it was to sit all day in a command center with Predator feeds projected on all four walls, and give the final word to Generals on what insurgent targets could or could not be hit with missiles.

Also, I once kew of an Army JAG whose job it was to travel into Anbar with a heavy artillary Marine Unit and assess the damages to the private property of Iraqi civilians and write up a receipt they could redeem from the U.S. in Iraqi dollars. He was actually slightly injured during an attack on the Marine unit, and was consequently visited in the hospital by many fellow officers intrigued by the idea of Purple-Hearted JAG. I think he even might've been mentioned in "Fiasco" a book on the Iraq War.

[GatorAbe7]

In case I came accross as a little unfavorable to the officer JAGS or the prosecutors, I should note that when a service-member is court-martialed, the service member's commander (usually a LtCol or Navy Commander) is just as influencial as the investigators and prosecutors involved. Almost always (from what I saw), commanders side with the investigators (AFOSI, NCIS, Army CID) because, between the investigators and the defendant, the investigators are understandly viewed as the honest party, though some of their means of investigation go quite far. Until the case is turned over to the JAG for trial, investigators actively campaign against the defendant for the strictest of the three possible types of court-martials during private meetings. Consequently, once the prosecutor takes over, the commander is almost always unquestionably on the side of the prosecution and signs and supports pretty much anything that helps the prosecutor.

This is not as big of a problem as it sounds, because usually the commanders of the legal office (also a LtCol) who acts as a nuetral overseer, along with the third party Article 32 investigators (JAGs, not special investigators) do a very thorough and fair job of applying/dropping appropriate charges.

The problems occur when two things happen:
1. The commander of the legal office acts as a prosecutor. This happens when legal office personal turnover is high and cases which last 9 or more months keep rotating different prosecutors. To provide continuity, the legal office commander may act as the head prosecutor. In the one example I witnessed of this, the legal office commander went against several recommendations from the Articla 32 investigators, which is almost unheard of. In others words, this guy was an extreme case.

2. The Article 32 investigators don't care. This sounds flippant, but almost always, the A32 guys have to been flown in and are given 3 days (after the Grand Jury hearing) to submit a recommendation of charges. Consequently, they are often the least informed party, and because almost all Grand Jury hearings (called Article 32 hearings) proceed forward anyway, the A32 investigators have pre-decided to push the case forward. However, when an A32 investigator pushes a hasty recommendation, it unintentionally helps the defense.

[Aardvark]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U8Cu1h1rIHg