When a navy loses a ship, a court-martial follows even without blame
A court-martial is a military trial that judges members of the armed forces under military law. Yet it is not always an accusation: most navies automatically convene one whenever a vessel is lost, simply so the circumstances enter the official record. France, meanwhile, holds none at all in peacetime.
The plural is courts-martial because martial is an adjective placed after its noun, so the noun takes the plural. Americans hyphenate the term in every use, while British style keeps court martial as two words for the noun and hyphenates only the verb. Trials generally feature a presiding judge, a prosecutor and a defence lawyer, all of them qualified lawyers who are also officers, although the exact format differs by country and by how serious the charge is.
Many offences mirror civilian crimes such as theft, fraud or perjury. Others exist only in uniform: desertion, cowardice and insubordination. Britain defines them in the Armed Forces Act 2006, the United States in the Uniform Code of Military Justice, and Canada in its National Defence Act and service regulations. Courts-martial can also try prisoners of war for war crimes, and the Geneva Conventions require such prisoners to receive the same procedures as the captor's own troops.
Canada uses two tiers. Superior officers handle summary trials, while serious cases go before independent military judges, with appeals to a dedicated appeal court. Canada ended capital punishment generally in 1976 and for military offences in 1998; the last soldier executed after a court martial was Harold Pringle in 1945, convicted of murder.
Finland takes a hybrid approach. In peacetime, cases under military jurisdiction are heard by an ordinary district court with a special make-up: a legally trained civilian judge sitting with an officer and a second member drawn from warrant officers, NCOs or privates. Decisions go by majority, but the sentence can never exceed what the professional judge supports, and war crimes and sexual offences stay outside military jurisdiction altogether. True courts-martial exist there only in wartime, created by government decree, and may even try civilians where ordinary courts have stopped working.
Source: Court-martial
