Military Crime, Civilian Arrest
new york.
if evidence is discovered after a person leaves the military (such as an admission) for a crime committed while in the military against fellow military personnel, can that person be arrested by civilian authorities in the state where the alleged crime was committed?
A few questions need to be answered:
1) What is the alleged crime? If it was petty larceny, I hardly see any jurisdiction going to the trouble to haul someone back into their state for legal proceedings. If it was something more serious, the answer might be different.
2) Did the crime allegedly occur on base or off base? If it's on base, the federal government might be able to prosecute it in federal court by using the Assimilative Crimes Act. Depends on whether the alleged crime violates the law of the state upon which the base is situated. If it's off base, the local/state jurisdiction would have to decide whether to prosecute in their court.
About the possibility of military prosecution: Unless the person falls under one of the categories of personnel outlined in 10 USC 802 (also known as Article 2, UCMJ), prosecution by military court-martial can't occur.
While beyond the scope of your civilian authorities question, I thought I'd throw this in: All military contracts are NOT "4 years active duty, 4 years of inactive ready reserve." First-term military obligations are set up so the portion not served on active duty is spent in the IRR (2 year enlistee would have 6 years IRR, 6 year enlistee would have 2 years IRR, etc). Depending on the circumstances of one's release from active duty, however, the individual is sometimes discharged outright (i.e., not made to serve their IRR time) instead of transferred to the reserve to complete their inactive obligation. People who are discharged for cause (weight control, disciplinary infractions, training failure) are usually discharged outright (Makes sense...why keep them in the Reserve if they're not good enough to keep in the regular component?).