Article 15 from the Commander's Chair

// 01The regulation, verbatim

Any other Soldier will be advised that the Soldier has a right to demand a trial... at any time prior to any consideration, examination, or presentation of evidence.

AR 27-10 ¶3-18d, p.11

present matters in defense, extenuation, or mitigation... call reasonably-available witnesses... request a spokesperson... examine available evidence

AR 27-10 ¶3-18e, g, h, i, j, pp.11-13

an offender has no right to legal counsel during the nonjudicial proceedings

AR 27-10 ¶3-18h, pp.11-13

not bound by the formal rules of evidence... may consider any matter, including unsworn statements

AR 27-10 ¶3-18j, pp.11-13

commander weighs age/grade/service/recent performance/misconduct pattern; sex-offenses mandatorily file performance portion regardless

AR 27-10 ¶3-6a-b, p.6

// 02What this means in practice

You are not a judge. You are a commander exercising a personal, discretionary authority — and every part of that sentence matters. Article 15 is nonjudicial punishment. It exists so you can correct minor misconduct without the machinery of a court-martial. But "nonjudicial" does not mean "informal." AR 27-10 hands you a specific script, and the moment you improvise off it, you create appeal bait.

Start before the hearing even happens. Under ¶3-18d, any Soldier has a right to demand trial by court-martial instead of accepting your Article 15. You have to advise them of that right "at any time prior to any consideration, examination, or presentation of evidence." This isn't a formality you rush through. It's the fork in the road that makes the whole proceeding voluntary. If you skip it, or if you start examining evidence before they've had the chance to make that election, you've built a procedural flaw into the foundation.

Once they accept nonjudicial punishment instead of demanding trial, the clock starts. The regulation gives them normally 48 hours to decide how to proceed and what to submit — 24 hours if you're running a summarized proceeding, which also strips out the right to counsel entirely. Know which lane you're in before you start, because the rights attached to each lane are different, and applying the wrong timeline is an easy appellate target.

Now the hearing itself. This is where most new commanders get sloppy, because it feels informal — no judge, no jury, just you and the Soldier in your office. Don't let the informality fool you into cutting corners. The Soldier has the right, under ¶3-18e and following, to present matters in defense, extenuation, and mitigation in your presence. Those are three distinct categories, and you should understand the difference, because the Soldier's spokesperson may lean on all three: defense is "I didn't do it" — facts showing the offense didn't happen. Extenuation is "here's the context" — circumstances that make the offense less serious than it looks on paper. Mitigation is "here's who I am" — facts about the Soldier's character and record that argue for a lighter punishment. You need to actually listen for which lane each piece of input falls into, because it changes how you weigh it. A defense argument, if you find it credible, should make you question whether the offense happened at all. An extenuation or mitigation argument doesn't erase the offense — it should just move your hand on the dial of what punishment fits.

The Soldier also gets to call reasonably available witnesses, at no fee to them, and to examine the evidence against them. They can request a spokesperson to help present their case — and here's a detail worth committing to memory because it trips people up: that spokesperson does not have to be a lawyer, and the Soldier has no right to legal counsel during the nonjudicial proceeding itself. That's a deliberate design choice in the regulation. Article 15 stays outside the criminal justice system precisely because the stakes and formality are lower than a court-martial. Don't let a Soldier's confusion — or a well-meaning senior NCO's confusion — convince you that counsel is required. It isn't, except at the summarized level, where it's affirmatively not provided at all.

When you sit as the hearing authority, you are explicitly not bound by the formal rules of evidence. You may consider any matter, including unsworn statements. That's a grant of latitude, not an invitation to sloppiness. Use it to get to the truth — hear out the informal, the anecdotal, the character reference — but don't mistake latitude for license to ignore the rights framework around it.

Last piece, and it's the one that shapes the Soldier's future more than the punishment itself: the filing determination. Once you've decided guilt and punishment, you decide where the record goes — locally or in the performance folder of the Soldier's official file. That's not a coin flip. You weigh the Soldier's age, grade, length of service, recent duty performance, and whether this fits a pattern of misconduct. There's one carve-out you don't get discretion on: sex offenses mandatorily file to the performance portion regardless of those other factors. Everything else is your judgment call, but it has to be a reasoned one, because a filing determination that looks arbitrary is exactly the kind of thing a Soldier's appeal — or your own boss, reviewing your work — will pick apart.

Run the hearing in order, give every right on the list, and document that you gave it. That's the whole game.

// 03What most get wrong

The mistake that overturns punishments on appeal almost never lives in whether the Soldier actually did it — it lives in whether you gave them the process they were owed before you decided that. New commanders tend to treat the demand-trial advisement and the defense/extenuation/mitigation opportunity as throat-clearing before the "real" conversation about punishment. They rush the advisement, or they let a Soldier's spokesperson talk for thirty seconds before cutting to the decision, and they never document that the rights were actually afforded.

On appeal, the superior commander isn't just re-weighing your judgment call on punishment severity — they're checking whether the proceeding itself was regular. A Soldier who can credibly claim "I was never advised of my right to demand trial" or "I wasn't given a real opportunity to present extenuation and mitigation matters" can get punishment set aside on process grounds alone, independent of guilt.

The corrective takeaway: build a checklist into your own routine and check it off in writing every time — advisement given, decision period honored, defense/extenuation/mitigation opportunity actually provided and heard, witnesses and spokesperson request handled, evidence made available. Five minutes of documentation discipline is what separates a punishment that survives appeal from one that doesn't.

// 04Regulations cited in this lesson

• AR 27-10 ¶3-18d, p.11
• AR 27-10 ¶3-18e, g, h, i, j, pp.11-13
• AR 27-10 ¶3-18h, pp.11-13
• AR 27-10 ¶3-18j, pp.11-13
• AR 27-10 ¶3-6a-b, p.6

// 05More in Adverse Actions for New Commanders & 1SGs

• Initiating a Flag Correctly
• Issuing a GOMOR — Filing Determination, Due Process
• AR 15-6 Investigations — When You Need One
• Relief for Cause — the AR 15-6 Prerequisite
• Writing Memos That Hold Up
• QMP/QSP Awareness

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