“An absolute and exclusive jurisdiction”: American Military Justice in Northern Ireland during World War Two

Building upon a number of years of research, expanding upon findings first discussed at the BAAS conference in 2012, and in the light of newly discovered archival material, this paper will analyse the role of race in the administration of American military justice during the Second World War, using Northern Ireland as a case study. It will employ the ‘imported context’ theory of Lily and Thomson, noting the ways in which justice in a military context was as much about maintaining discipline as it was about fairly enforcing the law. Using at least four case studies, this paper will demonstrate race was a pivotal factor in both the application of the death penalty in capital cases and the lack of rigorous investigation where a victim was African American. African Americans were disproportionately subject to courts martial and suffered much harsher penalties than their white counterparts; moreover, despite being stationed in the United Kingdom, they were subject to American military law rather than British civilian law, meaning that they could face the death penalty for rape, a capital crime under the former, but not the latter. This paper will examine courts martial records, including sentence reviews, the local press, US consular correspondence and Northern Ireland government records, to show how American racial prejudice became entangled with American military justice, and led to the differential treatment of black and white US servicemen. Northern Ireland is a useful case study for race and American military justice as it was the first part of the UK, and by definition, Europe, to see an American serviceman face court martial for murdering a civilian; it saw the first killing of a British soldier by an American, and the first killing of an African American soldier by a white comrade. Most of the resultant trials were open to the public, reflecting the Americans’ desire to see that justice was seen to be done, but also illustrated their determination, aided by local authorities, not to cede legal jurisdiction for their troops to local courts.