Methodology used

To determine the degree of public access to military court proceedings, the Tully Center for Free Speech at Syracuse University’s Newhouse School for Public Communication surveyed a quarter of the military installations in each of the five branches. Ninety-nine locations were contacted between October 2007 and March 2008. They were selected by random interval from a master list of U.S. military installation worldwide published by the Army Times.

While this sample size is not statistically significant, researchers determined that surveying approximately one-fourth of the installations would provide an accurate snapshot of the larger population. Researchers tried at least three times on different days to contact each installation, and eventually heard from 75 bases. That translates to a 76 percent response rate, well above the norm for telephone surveys.

The researchers’ protocol included asking whether schedules for Article 32 hearings and courts-martial are made public, and if so, how civilians can attend them. In every call the researchers initially asked to speak with someone in “military justice” or the “legal department.” The callers explained they were researchers from Syracuse University and that the installation had been randomly selected among U.S. military bases worldwide for a survey.

The results were placed into one of four categories indicating whether the schedules were totally available for inspection; the schedules were partially open (such as the date or time was public, but not the defendant’s name or charge); no information was available to civilians; or the survey was not applicable. The latter category encompassed the few bases that for one reason or another do not conduct court proceedings on site.

Researchers did not include units of the National Guard because their structure and governance are not comparable to the five main military branches.