Actually, I'd reverse that, at least for the U.S. military. There are several types of military courts, in a spectrum ranging from "lower burden of proof of gu

Actually, I'd reverse that, at least for the U.S. military. There are several types of military courts, in a spectrum ranging from "lower burden of proof of guilt but tighter restrictions on punishments" to "higher burden of proof of guilt but fewer restrictions on punishments." For the rest of this post I will arbitrarily refer to the latter as the "lower" end of the spectrum and the former as the "higher." Non-judicial punishment (NJP), which isn't actually a court-martial, anchors the lower end of the spectrum: the commanding officer (CO) can consider more or less any evidence he chooses, and gets to decide guilt or innocence based upon a preponderance of evidence (as opposed to "reasonable doubt"), but the maximum punishments he can hand out are severely limited (still shitty if you get them, but not even in the same ballpark as hard time). At the high end of the spectrum are general courts-martial, which are comparable to civilian courts in terms of burden of proof, rules on evidence, and maximum sentences. Generally, the type of court-martial chosen is a function of how certain the authorities are that the defendant is guilty, and how bad they want to hammer the defendant. For example, if they're very confident that the defendant is guilty, but don't feel a need for very harsh punishment, they might use a summary court-martial (the "lowest" type of court-martial, with only NJP being lower on the spectrum). If they are not that confident of guilt, or if they really want to go for the maximum punishment, they will use a general court-martial. If you're guilty, you want to be towards the lower end of the spectrum because your punishment will be minimized. If you're not guilty, you want the general court-martial because anything less gives you a higher chance of being wrongfully convicted. Fortunately, in most circumstances, defendants have the right to demand proceedings which are higher on the spectrum. Typically, however, defendants who know that they are guilty have the good sense to accept the lower-end proceeding. There are other things which separate courts-martial from civilian courts, such as article 31 rights, and the composition of the jury.