Harm and Mac are assigned to a case in south Florida involving the shooting passing of a local car dealers son outside a popular bar. The Gen. requests that P.O. Coates be allowed to go along and assist Mac. The jury pool of base personnel is quickly depleted as most everyone on the base knew the accused, his former and very popular girlfriend, or had formed an opinion about the case. As a result Coates is forced to sit in as the Sixth Juror.
After being diagnosed with night blindness, Lt. Cmdr. Harmon Rabb, an F-14 Tomcat fighter pilot, is forced to change careers. Cmdr. Rabb chooses to join the Navy's Judge Advocate General (JAG) Corps. There he both defends and sometimes prosecutes Navy and Marine Corps defendants. He is sometimes assisted by fellow lawyer, Lt. Sarah "Mac" MacKenzie, and his other fellow JAG staff.
Many of Rabb's cases require him to both keep up his F-14 qualifications and travel the world, in order to bring justice to the cases he is trying.
Rabb must also deal with the fact that his father, also a former Navy pilot, never returned home after being held prisoner after he was shot down in North Vietnam. Rabb believing his father is still alive continues the search he has pursued to find his father, since his teens.