Criminal cas­es in the U.S. Military are con­duct­ed in spe­cial courts and under laws that dif­fer from the rest of the coun­try’s jus­tice sys­tem. Executions in this sys­tem are extreme­ly rare. There have been no exe­cu­tions since 1961. ​“The mil­i­tary is a com­mu­ni­ty of sol­i­dar­i­ty, a broth­er­hood and sis­ter­hood, all to its own,” said Teresa Norris, a for­mer mil­i­tary defense lawyer who still rep­re­sents a sol­dier on death row. ​“There is a real reluc­tance to exe­cute fel­low sol­diers unless it’s absolute­ly the worst kind of case and this is the only way.” In 1983, a num­ber of death sen­tences were com­mut­ed to life when a mil­i­tary appeals court found the mil­i­tary death penal­ty uncon­sti­tu­tion­al. The law was revised in 1984. One of the most sig­nif­i­cant con­cerns about cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment in the mil­i­tary is the decen­tral­ized nature of its judi­cial sys­tem. Dwight Sullivan, a for­mer Marine pros­e­cu­tor, said, ​“Even if you have 2 iden­ti­cal cas­es, one being pros­e­cut­ed by one com­man­der at one base and the oth­er being pros­e­cut­ed by a com­man­der at anoth­er base, you may have dif­fer­ent out­comes because the com­man­ders may have dif­fer­ent philoso­phies.” There are cur­rent­ly five inmates on the mil­i­tary death row in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, all of whose cas­es are under legal review. Three are black, two are white. The tri­al of Army Maj. Nidal Hasan, a psy­chi­a­trist charged with a dead­ly shoot­ing ram­page at Fort Hood, Texas, is sched­uled to begin August 6.

(C. Carter, ​“Military death row: More than 50 years and no exe­cu­tions,” CNN, July 28, 2013). See U.S. Military.

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