When it created the Offices of Special Trial Counsels, Congress set in place two parallel charging systems under the Uniform Code of Military Justice, one in which the STCs make disposition decisions over some cases and the traditional George III model in which nonlawyer commanders make disposition decisions for everything else. This seems wasteful.
A big question is whether so little is now left to commander convening authorities that the old system should be shut down and that chunk of cases shifted to the STCs. According to this U.S. Army report, "[a]s of Dec. 28, 2024, the OSTC’s first fully operational year, prosecutors reviewed more than 9,500 criminal investigations and exercised authority over 5,600 of those cases, according to OSTC." This seems to mean that nearly 59% of cases go into the STC basket. It will be interesting to see if a trend emerges in future years. If the convening authority caseload declines, Congress will want to consider shifting everything to the STCs.
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