Rosenblatt on Character Evidence

Different Spanks for Different Ranks: a Critical Appraisal of Character Evidence in Courts-Martial


Franklin Rosenblatt
Mississippi College - School of Law
Date Written: August 01, 2025
Abstract

This chapter explores character evidence in the U.S. military’s court-martial system. Courts-martial, unlike civilian criminal trials, permit defendants to present evidence of their own good character even when the character trait is not pertinent to the charged offenses. This derogation has been cheered by some as giving military defendants an extra tool to fight back in a system that may be stacked against them. But concerns about expansive use of character evidence soon became apparent: it tends to distort and confuse the issues in trial, and disproportionately benefits only high-status defendants. For all its good intentions, liberalized military character evidence became a tool of impunity for the powerful and a contributing factor to a sexual assault epidemic in the ranks.
Part II provides a basic overview of the U.S. court-martial system. Part III describes the military’s character evidence rules, including the novel “good soldier defense” which erased the usual limitation that defendants are only allowed to raise “pertinent” character traits. After some troubling results of defendants wielding the “good soldier defense,” Congress attempted to rein it in, but seems to have merely driven it underground. Regardless of what the character evidence rules say, courts-martial tend to rely heavily on unofficial and unregulated character evidence. Part IV uses three examples of this – a scene from “A Few Good Men” and two real courts-martial – to show how unofficial character evidence such as military rank and decorations can shape court-martial outcomes in ways that evade formal evidentiary gatekeeping.