When a Colonel disobeys a direct order to not send his soldiers on a rescue mission in Haiti, things are made worse when a photographer takes a picture that appears to show one of the American soldiers using a child as a human shield, during the fire fight that brakes out during the rescue. Now the SecNav demands that JAG court-martial the Colonel against their advice.
Harm and Mac must prosecute, while Chegwidden decides to personally defend the Colonel. However, will Harm's aggressive search for the truth in Haiti help or hurt his case? Plus, Mac is confronted with prosecuting a fellow military officer she once had a secret past relation with, when she was his subordinate.
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.