How Long Does a Court-Martial Stay on Your Record?

A court-martial conviction stays on your record forever. There is no expiration, no automatic sealing, and no military expungement process. A Special or General Court-Martial is a federal criminal conviction that follows you into civilian life, appearing on background checks and affecting benefits, firearm rights, and employment for the rest of your life. A Summary Court-Martial is the exception: federal law treats it as a non-criminal forum, so a finding there is not a criminal conviction at all.

Why the Level of Court-Martial Matters

The military uses three levels of courts-martial, and the level determines whether you have a criminal record at all.

A Summary Court-Martial handles minor offenses. Federal law explicitly labels it a “non-criminal forum,” and a guilty finding is not a criminal conviction. Maximum punishment is capped at one month of confinement, and no punitive discharge can be imposed.¹

A Special Court-Martial can impose up to one year of confinement, forfeiture of two-thirds pay per month for up to a year, and a bad-conduct discharge. This is a federal criminal conviction.²

A General Court-Martial is the most serious level, used for offenses like sexual assault, murder, desertion, and espionage. It can impose any punishment authorized by the UCMJ, including a dishonorable discharge, life imprisonment, and death for certain offenses.³

Whether a Special or General conviction counts as a felony or misdemeanor in civilian contexts depends on the maximum punishment for the specific offense. The general federal standard treats any crime punishable by more than one year of imprisonment as felony-equivalent, so most General Court-Martial convictions land on the felony side.

Where the Record Actually Lives

A court-martial conviction does not sit quietly in a single military file. It spreads across databases that civilian employers, law enforcement, and government agencies routinely search.

Your Official Military Personnel File is the first place. The OMPF is maintained permanently by the National Personnel Records Center and contains the complete record of your service, including any court-martial proceedings and their outcomes. It survives your separation by decades.

Special and General Court-Martial convictions are also entered into the FBI’s National Crime Information Center, the criminal justice database accessible to law enforcement agencies nationwide around the clock.⁴ NCIC feeds most civilian background checks. When an employer, landlord, or licensing board runs your name, the conviction appears the same as any other federal criminal record.

What Happens Even Without a Conviction

When military law enforcement opens a criminal investigation, it “titles” you as the subject and indexes your name in the Defense Central Index of Investigations. Once indexed, your name generally stays there even if you are found not guilty, unless there was mistaken identity or no credible information justified the indexing.⁵ Army Criminal Investigation Division maintains its own database of investigation records for up to 40 years, including cases where no probable cause was found.⁶ These records can surface during security clearance investigations, and you may be asked to explain circumstances of a case you were never convicted in.

What Shows on Your DD-214

The DD Form 214 is the single most important document for accessing veterans’ benefits, proving service to employers, and qualifying for federal programs. It records your character of service, the reason for separation, and your reenlistment eligibility.⁷

A punitive discharge from a court-martial appears directly on this form. A Special Court-Martial can impose a bad-conduct discharge; a General Court-Martial can impose either a bad-conduct or the more severe dishonorable discharge. Officers face a dismissal, which carries similar consequences. The DD-214 also contains separation and reentry codes that signal to anyone familiar with the military system exactly why you left and whether you would be allowed back.

Every employer who asks to see your DD-214 sees the characterization. Every agency reviewing your benefit eligibility sees the codes.

VA Benefits After a Court-Martial

Federal regulations create a statutory bar to VA pension, compensation, and dependency and indemnity compensation for anyone discharged by sentence of a General Court-Martial.⁸ That means no disability compensation, no VA pension, and no survivor benefits based on that period of service.

A dishonorable discharge also generally makes you ineligible for GI Bill education benefits, VA home loan guarantees, and most VA healthcare. A bad-conduct discharge from a Special Court-Martial does not trigger the automatic bar, but the VA still reviews the underlying conduct and can deny benefits when it involved moral turpitude, willful and persistent misconduct, or other disqualifying behavior.⁸

One narrow exception exists: if the VA determines you were insane at the time of the offense, none of these bars apply. It is a high standard, rarely met.

Firearm Rights

Federal law prohibits you from possessing firearms or ammunition if you have been convicted of a crime punishable by more than one year of imprisonment. Because a Special or General Court-Martial is a conviction “in any court” under federal law, a court-martial for an offense carrying more than a year of potential confinement triggers this prohibition.⁹

A separate, independent bar applies to anyone discharged under dishonorable conditions. Even if the underlying offense would not otherwise disqualify you, a dishonorable discharge alone makes it a federal crime to possess a firearm.⁹ A third bar applies if the court-martial involved a misdemeanor crime of domestic violence, regardless of discharge characterization. These restrictions are permanent under federal law unless the conviction is overturned or you receive a presidential pardon.

Employment and Security Clearances

A court-martial conviction complicates civilian employment in two ways. It appears on NCIC-based background checks, indistinguishable from a civilian federal conviction to employers in law enforcement, education, healthcare, and financial services.

If your work requires a security clearance, the SF-86 questionnaire requires you to disclose any court-martial or UCMJ disciplinary action within the past seven years.¹⁰ Lying on the SF-86 is a separate federal offense, and because investigation records persist for decades, the adjudicator reviewing your application may already know about the conviction before you disclose it.

Professional licensing boards for fields like nursing, law, and medicine typically require disclosure of all criminal convictions, including military ones. A court-martial will not automatically disqualify you in most states, but it triggers an individualized review of your character and fitness. Expect to explain the circumstances in detail.

Military Retirement Pay

A court-martial can cost you your pension. If a punitive discharge or dismissal occurs before you reach retirement eligibility, you lose the pension entirely because you never vested. A court-martial sentence can also include forfeiture of pay as part of the punishment itself: a Special Court-Martial can order forfeiture of up to two-thirds pay per month for up to a year, while a General Court-Martial can impose total forfeiture of all pay and allowances. Certain convictions involving national security, espionage, or disloyalty result in mandatory forfeiture of military retired pay even for those already retired.¹¹

Can a Court-Martial Record Be Changed or Removed?

Permanent does not mean unchangeable. Several post-conviction paths exist, though none are easy and success rates are low. Which path fits depends on what you want changed and how long ago the conviction happened.

Direct Appeals

Serious court-martial convictions are reviewed automatically. Cases with significant punishment go to the relevant service branch’s Court of Criminal Appeals, which can review both facts and law. The next step is the Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces, which reviews cases meeting certain sentence thresholds.¹² The U.S. Supreme Court can grant further review, though it rarely does for military cases. Appeals must be pursued promptly. They are your best chance of overturning the conviction, but they address legal errors at trial, not second-guessing the outcome.

Discharge Review Board

If you mainly want to upgrade your discharge characterization rather than overturn the conviction, the Discharge Review Board for your branch can change how the discharge is classified. The DRB has hard limits: you must apply within 15 years of discharge, it cannot review a discharge imposed by a General Court-Martial, and for court-martial cases its authority extends only to changing the characterization for purposes of clemency.¹³ A denial can be escalated to the BCMR.

Board for Correction of Military Records

The BCMR (or Board for Correction of Naval Records for Navy and Marine Corps cases) is the highest administrative body for fixing errors or injustices in military records.¹⁴ Unlike the DRB, the BCMR can review General Court-Martial discharges, correct a wide range of record entries beyond just characterization, and hear cases regardless of how long ago the discharge occurred. The statute sets a three-year application window from when you discover the error or injustice, but the board can waive that deadline in the interest of justice.¹⁵ You carry the burden of proving that an error or injustice warrants the change.

Presidential Pardon

A pardon forgives the conviction but does not erase it from your record. For an individual petition, federal regulations require a waiting period of at least five years after release from confinement, or five years after the conviction if no prison sentence was imposed, before you can petition the Office of the Pardon Attorney.¹⁶ Individual pardons for ordinary court-martial convictions remain exceedingly rare.