Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces

Update. A commenter has provided the following for consideration.

In Richards, Judge Hardy, writing for the Court, does two main things: reiterate the need for the government to prove every single element of an offense, and provide a framework which practitioners can use to determine if something is prejudicial to good order and discipline. United States v. Richard, __M.J.­­__, No. 22-0091/AF, 2002 CAAF LEXIS __ (C.A.A.F. Sept. 7, 2022).

Appellant was convicted of three specifications of violating Article 134, UCMJ, and one specification of violating Article 128, UCMJ. For the Art. 134 charges, the Government had to prove two elements: “(1) that Appellant knowingly and wrongfully produced, possessed, or distributed child pornography; and (2) that under the circumstances, the Appellant’s conduct was to the prejudice of good order and discipline in the armed forces.” Id. At trial, the government relied on Appellant’s military status, his location on a military installation, and use of “resources he received from the military to effectuate the commission of his crimes” to prove the second element of Art. 134, UCMJ. Brief for Appellee at 15, United States v. Richards, No. 22-0091 (C.A.A.F. Apr. 25, 2022). The CAAF said definitively that this was not enough. While finding that “the Government failed to proffer any evidence that Appellant’s misconduct had any negative effect- indeed, any effect at all- on the good order and discipline of the armed forces,” the Court solidified that evidence of actual harm is required to prove the element of prejudicial to good order and discipline. Richards, 2002 CAAF LEXIS __ (C.A.A.F. Sept. 7, 2022).

In an important reminder for trial counsel, Judge Hardy states that the “constitutional mandated” to prove beyond a reasonable doubt every element of the charged offense “applies just as much to the terminal element of Art. 134, UCMJ, as it does every other element of a criminal offense. Id. 

The Court spends a large section of the 15-page decision, as does Judge Maggs’ concurrence, discussing the definition, or lack thereof, of the phrase prejudicial to good order and discipline. “The Government’s expansive view of the scope of conduct that is ‘to the prejudice of good order and discipline’- essentially that any misconduct that has a nexus to the military qualifies- suggests that it might be necessary for us to better define such conduct, something that would be well within this Court’s authority to do so.” Id. After going through some history, the Court settles on the definition given by Colonel William Winthrop in 1895: “The misconduct must be activity against ‘good order’ which affects the ‘condition of tranquility, security, and good government of the military service.’”

The government cited to a few cases, primarily United States v. Davis, 26 M.J. 445, 448 (C.M.A. 1988), to suggest that unlawful conduct coupled with the use of government resources to tangentially further that crime prejudices good order and discipline.  The Court explicitly states that it does not overrule Davis, but it does state “[t]o whatever extent older cases suggest that prejudice to good order and discipline can be assumed or implied based on the misconduct of the accused, those cases have been overruled.” Richards, 2002 CAAF LEXIS __ (C.A.A.F. Sept. 7, 2022).
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The CAAF overturned AFCCA and the trial court’s decision and found that the case was not legally sufficient as to the three specifications of Art. 134, UCMJ. The case was remanded for further proceedings. For the field, the take aways are: the government must prove every element of the charged offense and the phrase “prejudicial to good order and discipline” means something. 

Some years ago, Air Force Colonel Jeremy Weber turned a masters thesis into a law review article about good order and discipline.

Jeremy S. Weber, Whatever Happened to Military Good Order and Discipline. 66 CLEVE. ST. L. REV. 123 (2017).

If Washington and de Saxe are correct that discipline forms the soul of a military, then the United States military seems to be experiencing a spiritual crisis. Increasingly, the public perceives the military term of art “good order and discipline” not as representing a core principle of military effectiveness, but as rhetorical “chaff” military leaders use to voice their opposition to proposed reforms without actually communicating anything. In recent years, military leaders have employed the term to voice their opposition to a number of proposed personnel, social, and legal military reforms, and they have done so without clearly explaining what good order and discipline is or why it requires a certain position on these policies. In most cases, the military ultimately enacted those reforms without any measurable negative effect on good order and discipline. As a result, the linguistic impact of the term has come under fire from Congressional leaders and the media. This battle over the meaning and weight of the good order and discipline rationale has played out most recently in calls for military justice reform.

His statistical research shows that the term is often stated or used but that it defies definition. He explores the root of the term going back to the Seventeenth and Eighteenth centuries. As one of his purposes for examining the current state of UCMJ art. 134 prosecutions he says that,

​ This Article then ties the developments regarding Article 134 to a larger issue: the military’s difficulty in defining what good order and discipline means. To address this situation, this Article proffers a comprehensive definition of the term that military leaders can use to specifically ground their positions and proffers that the military justice system can better specify what conduct is and is not prohibited under Article 134.

In developing that theme he reviews military and Supreme Court decisions challenging prosecutions under Article 134 and concludes,

However, persisting issues continue to raise the question of whether the contours of the “good order and discipline” term are really understood, or, as the dissent [in Parker v. Levy] held (sic), whether the military has changed to the extent that good order and discipline now represents a nebulous concept.

He gets us to one "limitation" in the Manual for Courts-Martial under Article 134(1) that the conduct have a "reasonable and palpable effect" on good order and discipline--a limitation perhaps ignored in trials. He recognizes this still does not define what actions can be prejudicial in many cases rather it's an attempt to give weight to the severity of the conduct. The article is a good read, especially as Judge Maggs has given it a bit of currency--he cites Weber's article in his (and Judge Stucky's) concurring opinion in United States v. Richard, __ M.J. ___, No. 22-0091/AF, 2022 CAAF LEXIS __ (C.A.A.F. Sept. 7, 2022).

Is there a volunteer to do a case review for us (anonymous even)? We don't want to write more ourselves because we are in the middle of a brief on this very issue.

​Submit a draft to admin@nimj.org.