- in 2016, Congress amended Article 56, UCMJ, 10 USC § 856 (Supp. IV 2013-2017), introducing segmented sentencing to the military justice system; under this new sentencing regime, a military judge must specify both a term of confinement for each offense for which an accused is found guilty and whether those terms will run consecutively or concurrently
- in this case, the version of RCM 1002 which governed appellant's sentencing provided that the terms of confinement for two or more specifications shall run concurrently when each specification involved the same victim and the same act or transaction
- the version of RCM 1002 which governed appellant's sentencing that prohibited consecutive terms of confinement if the convictions arose out of the same act or transaction was an exercise of the President's discretionary authority to ensure that the charges and specifications against an accused, even if they were not multiplicious or otherwise unlawful, did not unduly exaggerate an accused's punitive exposure; the provision was a limit on the total punishment that a convicted servicemember would receive below that which the Double Jeopardy protections of the Constitution would otherwise allow
- the word "transaction" in the version of RCM 1002 which governed appellant's sentencing that prohibited consecutive terms of confinement if the convictions arose out of the same act or transaction meant a series of occurrences or an aggregate of acts which are logically related to a single course of criminal conduct
CAAF Opinion Digest · IV.C.1 · Sentence and Punishment
Generally
4 digested opinions, 2023–2024 Terms
2024 (October Term)
- a maximum punishment calculation error claim is waivable
- a court-martial shall impose punishment that is sufficient, but not greater than, to promote justice and to maintain good order and discipline in the armed forces
- rather than directly affecting how a military judge settles upon an appropriate penalty to impose, the statutory maximum authorized punishment instead serves to delineate the outer bounds of the judge's discretion in imposing a penalty
- when Congress first enacted the UCMJ, courts-martial adjudged only one sentence even if they found the accused guilty of multiple offenses; in the Military Justice Act of 2016, Congress introduced segmented sentencing in which a separate term of confinement and fine is adjudged for each specification for which there was a finding of guilty when sentencing is conducted by the military judge; so, instead of unitary sentencing in the military justice system, we now have segmented sentencing
2023 (October Term)
- in the NDAA for FY 2017, Congress amended Article 56, UCMJ, generally, and added Article 56(c)(2), UCMJ, to eliminate unitary sentencing in cases in which a military judge alone sentences the accused to a fine or confinement for more than one offense; in such cases, the military judge must now specify the fine or confinement for each offense; Article 56(c)(2), UCMJ, thus replaced unitary sentences with what might be called segmented sentences
Source and status
This is a verbatim mirror of the Opinion Digest and opinions tables published by the United States Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces. The headnotes are the court staff’s summaries of the opinions, reproduced as published; they are not the opinions themselves and not this site’s commentary. Nothing here is edited on this site.
Last updated by the court: Oct 13, 2026 · mirrored Oct 29, 2026 · digest page IVC1 · Always confirm a holding against the opinion itself (linked from each case name).