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some reason. Article 2 of the UCMJ now provides a
statutory constructive enlistment with four basic
requirements as follows:
Voluntary submission to military authority
Minimum age and mental competency standards
(no one under age 17 may be subject to military
jurisdiction by force of law)
Receipt of military pay or allowances
Performance of military duties
If these requirements are met, a person is subject to
the UCMJ until properly discharged, despite any
recruiting defect.
The possibility of the exercise of military
jurisdiction ends with the delivery of a discharge
certificate with the intent to effect separation. This is
true even though the offense was committed while on
active duty.
Three potential exceptions exist to the general rule
concerning discharge as follows:
. In the very unusual case contemplated by Article
3(a), UCMJ, (serious offenses committed off base
overseas), jurisdiction will continue into a subsequent
enlistment.
. When a person is discharged before the
expiration of his or her term of enlistment for the
purpose of reenlistment and, thus, there has been no
interruption of his or her active service, court-martial
jurisdiction exists to try the member for offenses
committed during the prior enlistment. Note, however,
that jurisdiction is ended by a discharge at the end of an
enlistment even though the service member
immediately reenters the service.
l If a person fraudulently obtains the delivery of
the discharge papers, jurisdiction is not lost.
JURISDICTION OVER THE OFFENSE.—
Before the Supreme Court’s decision in U.S. v. Soloria
it was necessary to show that an offense committed off
base had a service connection in order for a court-martial
to have jurisdiction. The Soloria decision held that the
accused’s status as a person subject to the UCMJ, and
not the subject matter of the offense, was the test for
court-martial jurisdiction. Accordingly, it is no longer
necessary to plead subject matter jurisdiction in a
specification.
Review of Supporting Documents
When reviewing specifications, you should use all
the tools at your disposal. Reviewing supporting
documents that accompany a charge sheet will ensure
the accuracy of your effort. The accused’s service
record will aid you in determining whether or not there
is jurisdiction over the accused. Also, this helps to
verify the personal information on page 1 of the charge
sheet. Other documents that will help you are shore
patrol reports, incident complaint reports, NCIS reports,
records of unauthorized absences (NAVPERS 601-6Rs,
page 6s), and administrative remarks (NAVPERS
601-13s, page 13s). These documents will help you in
determining the correctness of the drafted charge(s) and
specification(s).
WITNESS INTERVIEWS
Some aspects of LN duty assignments require you
to interview witnesses with the purpose of gathering
information much the same as an investigator. In most
cases, witnesses have been interviewed by trained
investigators before you undertake the task. In any
event, the techniques used by you to gather information
are universal and effective if applied properly.
Interviews
During the process of gathering information for an
investigation, you almost invariably make use of one of
the most valuable sources, people; you do so by
interviewing them. An interview is the questioning of a
person believed to possess knowledge of official interest
to the command and the interviewer. In an interview,
the interviewer encourages the person questioned to
give an account of an incident under investigation in his
or her own words and in his or her own way. Interviews
are used for the following purposes:
l To establish the facts of a crime that may provide
the investigator with leads that will disclose the
perpetrator of the crime or offense under investigation
or of other crimes committed or both
l To corroborate or disprove statements
l To verify inferences derived from physical
evidence
l To link physical evidence of a suspect with a case
l To clear a suspect (develop evidence that
eliminates an individual as suspect of committing an
offense)
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