At the height of the Korean War in June 1952, the American aircraft carrier U.S.S. Princeton steamed busily across the Sea of Japan. Each day, dozens of bombers and fighters roared from the ship’s deck, zooming westward to hunt targets in North Korea. Princeton’s aircraft intercepted enemy planes, destroyed roads and bridges and even torpedoed dams.

But below the Princeton’s flight deck on June 4, 1952, a young American sailor confronted a different kind of enemy: a U.S. military court-martial that accused him of a crime he said he did not commit. Seaman Howard Burge pleaded not guilty to a single charge of larceny for stealing a fellow Princeton sailor’s peacoat. Seaman Burge, 21, voluntarily waived his Constitutional right to remain silent to testify in his own defense. Nevertheless, a three-member tribunal found Seaman Burge guilty and sentenced him to jail with hard labor plus a punitive discharge from the service. He was thrown into the Princeton’s brig.

There was but one problem. The court had broken the law.

The court had misapplied the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ), a landmark, 50-year-old federal statute still in force today. The UCMJ sets out a framework of military justice jurisdiction, offenses and procedures. Seaman Burge owes his freedom to the UCMJ, but his case also illustrates one of the oft-touted benefits of the modern military justice system: its ability to travel with American forces anytime, anyplace. While most U.S. criminal laws lack extra-territorial jurisdiction, the UCMJ mandates a flexible and fair system that can seek justice wherever U.S. troops are deployed.

Congress drafted the UCMJ in response to the enormous number of disciplinary actions in World War II. During that conflict, more than two million American soldiers were convicted in courts-martial out of a total 12 million on active duty. Post-war studies indicated that command influence — unlawful interference with the justice system by higher ranking officers — ran rampant in wartime military justice proceedings, frequently leaving defendants to be punished at the commander’s whimsy. Polarized opinions on the appropriate level of commander involvement in justice matters triggered heated debate, with former service members especially critical of existing justice schemes. Critics of the proposed UCMJ attacked the code’s erosion of commander disciplinary powers; supporters complained that the UCMJ’s limits on command influence did not go far enough.

When Congress finally adopted the UCMJ on May 5, 1950, they completely replaced separate and distinct criminal justice systems operated by each of the military service branches. The UCMJ created a myriad of previously nonexistent procedural safeguards for accused persons as well as new Boards of Review in Washington, D.C., with senior military attorneys given broad powers to review court-martial cases. American military leaders considered the UCMJ with skepticism. There was no precedent, no past cases to support the new statute which now carried the force of law. Military attorneys, or judge advocates, were similarly noncommittal. Colonel Frederick Bernays Wiener, a senior Army judge advocate who testified before Congress on the code’s development, assessed the final product grimly: "It might work."

As judge advocates struggled to master their new core legal text in late 1950, military officials scrambled to prepare the nation for the Korean War. U.S. Navy warships mothballed in the years following World War II, including the newly constructed aircraft carrier U.S.S. Princeton — the fifth Navy warship by that name — were quickly refurbished and launched. In December 1950, Princeton arrived off North Korea in time for her planes to provide vital air support during the massive U.S. retreat and evacuation at the port of Hungnam. Princeton’s warplanes spent most of 1951 demolishing North Korean rail and highway bridges until the ship returned to the west coast of the United States in 1951. It rejoined hostilities in early 1952.

The first sign of trouble aboard the Princeton surfaced during its brief U.S. port call. The ship’s Police Petty Officer could not find his peacoat. Boatswain’s mate third class ("BM3") Kenneth E. Butler recalled seeing his blue peacoat last when the ship was docked at Bangor, Washington. Princeton next sailed south to Alameda, California, and on March 17, 1952, BM3 Butler found what he believed to be his coat hanging in a locker assigned to Seaman Burge. BM3 Butler questioned Seaman Burge about the peacoat, which displayed the stenciled name "BURGE" — but upon closer inspection also faintly showed the name "BUTLER." According to BM3 Butler and another investigating officer on the ship, it appeared Butler’s name had been overwritten with black ink. The prime suspect: Seaman Burge.

Their suspicion appeared to be justified when the next day, March 18, BM3 Butler found a second peacoat aboard the ship, this one black and stenciled with Burge’s name 15 times in its lining. This second coat was returned to Seaman Burge, but was found the following morning by an inspection team as the jacket floated in the water alongside Princeton. When questioned, Seaman Burge stated he did not know how the second coat landed in the water, an apparently unconvincing response. Seaman Burge was charged with the theft of BM3 Butler’s peacoat and the Princeton’s commanding officer ordered a court-martial convened that summer.

Princeton had rejoined the American fleet off Korea and was fully operational as the special court-martial began on June 12, 1952. For the court-martial, naval officers were assigned both as trial counsel, to represent the government, and as defense counsel. The court-martial jurors, or "members," were three other Princeton officers, the minimum required. There was no presiding judge and none of the officers involved in the case were lawyers, requirements that did not exist until after a significant code revision 1969. The senior-ranking member, known as the "president," supervised the proceeding.

The court opened at 11:15 a.m. and finished at 3:40 p.m. that afternoon — the prosecution presented its entire case to the members before lunch: first the victim, BM3 Butler, followed by the investigating officer. Both identified Seaman Burge as the thief.

In his cross-examinations, defense counsel attempted to draw the members’ focus away from his client. He first tried to distinguish how Seaman Burge might, in fact, have owned two separate peacoats. When BM3 Butler took the stand, the defense counsel questioned whether the first coat even belonged to the petty officer. After BM3 Butler responded that he had stenciled his last name onto the peacoat himself, defense counsel requested a stencil brush be delivered to the courtroom so that BM3 Butler could give an actual handwriting sample to compare against the writing on the coat. Trial counsel opposed the request on the basis that a handwriting expert was not available to compare the writings. The court sustained the government’s objection to such a demonstration.

Defense counsel challenged the court’s reasoning, addressing the members:

"The writing is assumed to be that of the witness," replied the president of the court, who settled all disputes of law.

Unfortunately, the court had just "assumed" one of the elements of the crime of larceny — that the stolen peacoat was the property of BM3 Butler — which was required to be proven by the government beyond a reasonable doubt. In doing so, the court violated a fundamental guarantee afforded to every criminal defendant under American law: a presumption of innocence.

Undeterred, defense counsel subsequently called two witnesses who identified the first peacoat as one issued by the Navy to his client in Philadelphia in 1950. In his closing argument, defense counsel appealed to the members’ common sense:

Not surprisingly, the court members found Seaman Burge guilty.

In the court-martial’s sentencing phase, trial counsel requested a tough punishment, moving into evidence a 1951 conviction of Seaman Burge for an unauthorized four-day absence without leave, or "AWOL." Defense counsel argued for leniency, pointing out that Seaman Burge had been restricted to the ship since the investigation began on March 18. Deliberating for 20 minutes, the members sentenced Seaman Burge to three months imprisonment at hard labor to be followed by a punitive Bad Conduct Discharge from the military.

A review of the case by an independent naval officer identified "certain irregularities" in the case of U.S. v. Burge, though nothing of major significance. For example, in court the trial counsel first identified the peacoat as having a value of $32.00, but afterwards argued the coat was worth about $35.00 and later asked his own witness whether the coat was worth approximately $34.00. However, these inconsistencies by a non-barrister did not harm the "substantial rights" of Seaman Burge and the case was considered closed and forwarded appropriately to Washington, D.C. for an appellate legal review.

Less than four months later, the U.S. Navy Board of Review disapproved the members’ finding of fact in the case, dismissed the charge against Seaman Burge, and set aside his sentence. The court issued its short opinion on September 15, 1952, ruling that the exclusion of BM3 Butler’s handwriting sample "constituted prejudicial error." Princeton was still off Korea when the ruling was made and transmitted to the ship on September 23.

First the court observed that firsthand witness handwriting was "clearly admissible" under the UCMJ as evidence for the members to compare against an unidentified sample. No handwriting expert was required to conduct such an evaluation, a rule now codified in both the Military Rules of Evidence and the Federal Rules of Evidence.

Second, the court scolded the grave mistake of the members: their presumption of the handwriting on the peacoat to be Butler’s own:

The holding in U.S. v. Burge — that handwriting must be identified by a person with knowledge of the writing — was cited by the Board of Review in a 1953 Marine Corps case.

Despite the legal inexpertness of her crew, Princeton lived a proud tradition. Following the Korean War, she gave aid to thousands of homeless flood victims in Ceylon in January 1958 and saw action in the Vietnam conflict. As one of her last sorties, Princeton was the prime recovery ship for the Apollo 10 lunar orbit mission in 1969, paving the way for man’s first walk on the moon. The sixth and current U.S.S. Princeton is a state-of-the-art Aegis missile cruiser armed with sophisticated Tomahawk missiles and electronic weaponry. It has been tasked with a variety of missions, including the war on drugs.

Also carrying a proud heritage is the UCMJ. Over the past half-century, politicians, military leaders, and Congress have dissected, analyzed and critiqued the code. In 1955, a commercial ready-reference guide designed to aid naval officers recommended shunning courts-martial:

In fact, naval commanders ignored this fear of a burdensome, bureaucratic nightmare and courts-martial became a much relied upon tool to enforce good order and discipline. In 1962, the Navy issued an official trial guide for non-lawyer personnel involved in such proceedings to meet a "growing requirement" for such information. Today, courts-martial convened in accordance with the UCMJ are a regular occurrence on U.S. military vessels and installations around the globe. As demonstrated by the Princeton court-martial, the UCMJ permits justice to be served in any location where the President sends our armed forces — with a review process strong enough to deflect command influence and prevent miscarriages of justice.

The UCMJ continues to come under criticism today. Appellate military judges have written opinions calling specifically on the President to adjust the Code for the good of the nation. And changes have been made. The appellate Boards of Review created in 1950 were renamed the Courts of Military Review in 1968, and again renamed the Courts of Criminal Appeals in 1994. Significant, substantive changes to the so-called "JAG bible" — the Manual for Courts-Martial — have been made several times.

For 50 years the UCMJ has bound our armed service branches with a single system of justice, a system which if properly nurtured, should endure well into the next century. For Seaman Harold Burge, the UCMJ protected a basic Constitutional right: to remain innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. For the members of the American military, the UCMJ safeguards justice.