And so it would begin. It may be true that some trial attorneys can remember every closing argument. I cannot. But I do remember many—and I remember my hours of preparation, the tortured phrasings, and the rehearsals. I remember the recognition that I had little time to adjust my planned argument after the facts that actually came out at trial didn’t quite match the eloquent argument I had prepared.

On 24 July 2021, as the Honorary Regimental Colonel of the Judge Advocate General’s (JAG) Corps, I will proudly drink a toast to the 40th anniversary of the men and women of the 96th Basic Course of the JAG School where I started my career as an Army lawyer. Over the years, and even now as a retired judge advocate (JA), I am constantly amazed at how service in the JAG Corps produces so many lifelong friendships that endure the test of time, professional association, and geography.

News & Notes 2021 Issue 3

Born in Yonkers, New York, in 1975, following in the footsteps of his father and grandfather who served in the Army, Command Sergeant Major (CSM) Osvaldo Martinez Jr., the 13th Regimental Command Sergeant Major of the Judge Advocate General’s (JAG) Corps and Command Sergeant Major of the U.S. Army Legal Services Agency (USALSA) at Fort Belvoir, Virginia, enlisted in the U.S. Army in June 1993 from Leesville, Louisiana.

While every member of the Corps knows that the Deputy Judge Advocate General is the No. 2 lawyer in the organization, few know the history of this important position, much less that it did not exist in its present form until after World War II.

As a lifelong Raiders fan, I am intimately familiar with the potential hazards of excessive loyalty to a team. I grew up in northern California when the Oakland Raiders were one of the most dominant teams in the National Football League. I remained loyal to them when they moved to Los Angeles and won their third Super Bowl in eight years.

It beats the hell out of me . . . why everyone tries so hard to show that the prosecution were [sic] insidious, underhanded, unethical, immoral and God knows what monsters, that unfairly convicted a group of whiskerless Sunday school boys. What motivates you authors? I think that my staff did a hell of a great job. 

The Judge Advocate General’s (JAG) Corps’s Council on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) (“the Council”) has been going full tilt since its inception in July 2020. The twenty Council members appointed by The Judge Advocate General (TJAG) represent a diverse pool, reflective of our Corps’s population across race, gender, rank, and component. 

The implementation of the Military Justice Act of 2016 (MJA 2016) brought with it the first completely new court-martial forum in over fifty years: the judge-alone special court-martial (JA-SPCM).

A Texas civilian plaintiff’s attorney glares at the witness and questions, “If you had done your job as a commander, Mrs. Giffa would be alive today, wouldn’t she, Major Miller?” In federal civil court in Austin, Texas, a former company commander sits on the stand for hours, defending her response to a domestic violence (DV) incident years earlier between a Soldier and his spouse.