Like many special victims’ counsel (SVC), the authors of this article work under the supervision of officers and leaders who served as trial counsel or defense counsel before the Army established the SVC program. The intent of this article is to provide supervisors with insight into the day-to-day issues SVCs face, what a typical SVC’s practice looks like, and other considerations that may affect staffing or assignments.¹

Military justice (MJ) practitioners¹ continuously immerse themselves in often the most traumatic moments of other people’s lives. Whether prosecuting a sexual assault, or any other crime of violence, defending someone accused of it, or representing a victim, to do their job, and certainly to do it the right way, MJ practitioners delve into and revisit trauma, at length and in detail, virtually every day.

Fifteen years ago, a set of photos shocked the national conscience. Vivid images of prisoner and detainee abuse in Iraq brought war into American homes in a way that had not been felt since the Vietnam era. The images showed Soldiers “graphically mistreating and sexually humiliating Iraqi prisoners.

In August 2013, Lieutenant Colonel (LTC) Raymond Valas was an Army War College Fellow attending Syracuse University.¹ Lieutenant Colonel Valas was a member of the New Hampshire National Guard at the time, and he had recently served as the commander of an exercise in El Salvador from April to June 2013.²

Captain (CPT) John Smith, a special victims’ counsel (SVC) at Fort Bliss, meets his new client an hour before her scheduled interview with the Criminal Investigative Division (CID). The day before, his client made an unrestricted report1 of sexual assault against an active duty Soldier, and she decided to seek SVC representation.

Due process as a cultural matter is influenced by legal ideas but it is really a cluster of fluid notions that arise when people in different social and political contexts react to what they perceive as unfairness, abuse, and oppression.¹

In late June, the halls and classrooms of our Corps’ home at The Judge Advocate General’s Legal Center and School in Charlottesville, Virginia, filled with 132 soon-to-be Staff Judge Advocates (SJAs) and Deputy SJAs (DSJAs). But they were not the only future leaders in town.