@1maGoh - military law is incredible. I wish I knew more about it. More stories if you have them, please.
That was the only time I was involved in the military court system, fortunately, although there were a few things from that experience that felt really weird/different to me. After the conviction we were told that we had to have something to cover the shackles (or manacles or whatever they called them; hand and foot cuffs) because it would be demeaning if the convicted person was seen in them. Seems some to me.
The whole thing about the admission of guilt never sat right.
The victim admitted in stand that he changed his story from some previous pre trial process, which they played, and that the original thing he said was accurate (which would have gone a long way toward the defense getting one of the charges dropped; I think it was about not actually seeing who did it, but assuming who did based on where he saw the offender afterward or something) but the lawyers and the judge got into an argument about what he meant when he said that and the judge basically said if they couldn't agree on what was meant than he was going to ignore the whole thing.
They had the lab tech who tested for DNA there and asked her to describe get prices and how she found the DNA, etc. Her whole statement was basically, "I open the box. I test what's in it." Nothing about the quality or maintenance standards for her equipment or anything. Nothing about potential cross contamination. Everybody just went, "ok!" And that was that.
I found out that technically it's the prosecuting lawyers job to shout "All rise" but they pawn it off on the bailiff (who has the worst view for the damn thing) because they're lazy.
I think there's a minimum of 6 (or maybe 7, I don't exactly remember) jurors/members of the court, but they can have more. And I find out that the army is grossly incompetent at selecting people for the jury. They sent 20 or 30 people to the court for selection and all but the minimum number were MPs, CID, or trained and practicing sexual assault victim advocates for the Army. Those all got thrown out immediately for potential bias. Variable juror numbers seems weird. All of them are a certain rank or above and it's common knowledge that people of that rank have a significant disdain for the lower enlisted. You could see on their faces that they were voting guilty before the trail really got under way. Basically they all had that "this stupid Private fucked up" look. Basically the guy didn't get a fair shake, even if he was guilty.
Military courts, and military punishment in general, are really weird. They have a tendency to crush lower emitted for crimes and hand slap higher ranking enlisted our commissioned officers. Only higher ranking enlisted and officers can serve in the juries, so when one of them is on trial they all see themselves up there. Justice doesn't quite go out the window, but it takes a back seat to potential self preservation. The other thing they do is claim "I don't want to ruin that person's career. They've put in a lot of years and they need their retirement." Which makes not a link of fucking sense to me. I guess they shouldn't rape, rob, sell drugs, run prostitution rings, or otherwise break the law then, should they? But those close to retirement protect their own. And forcing someone to retire is considered a punishment. So is forcing them out of the military. There have been same pretty despicable crimes where the majority of the punishment was not being in the military anymore, basically unloading criminals onto the civilian population.
But hey, if it's not that military leader's problem anymore then it isn't a problem, right?
I'm not bitter.