UCMJ Article 122: Robbery

Robbery occupies a distinct place among the property offenses of the Uniform Code of Military Justice because it is not really a property offense alone. Codified at 10 U.S.C. 922, Article 122 punishes the taking of something of value from a person, or from that person’s presence, against their will, accomplished by force, violence, or fear of injury. It fuses a theft with a personal confrontation, and it is the confrontation, the use of force or fear against a human being, that separates robbery from ordinary larceny and drives its far heavier exposure. The offense protects two interests at once: the security of property and the bodily safety and peace of mind of the victim.

What the government must prove

A robbery conviction requires proof that the accused wrongfully took something of value from the person of another or in that person’s presence; that the taking was against the victim’s will; that the accused accomplished it by means of force or violence, or by putting the victim in fear of injury; and that, at the time, the accused intended to permanently deprive the owner of the property. The intent to steal is the same specific intent that underlies larceny. What robbery adds is the requirement that the force or the fear be the means of the taking, the instrument by which the victim’s will is overcome.

The “in the presence of” element matters. Property is taken from a person’s presence when it is within their control such that, but for the force or fear, they could have prevented the taking. A traveler forced at threat to stand aside while a bag is seized from a few feet away has had property taken from their presence even though it was never on their body. The unifying idea is that the victim’s control over the property was overcome by the force or fear the accused applied.

Force, violence, and fear

The force element is satisfied by any degree of physical force used to overcome the victim’s resistance or to compel submission, from striking or restraining down to wresting an item from a grip with enough force to overcome it. A snatch that meets no resistance because the victim never had the chance to resist may fall short of robbery and be only larceny, but force applied against an actual hold qualifies.

The alternative to force is fear, and here the statutory text is broader than many assume. The Code reaches a taking accomplished by fear of immediate or future injury, to the victim’s person or property, or to a relative, a family member, or anyone in the victim’s company at the time. A threat directed at a companion, or at the victim’s family, can supply the fear element just as a threat to the victim can. And contrary to a common misconception, the statute expressly includes fear of future injury, not only immediate harm. A threat that the victim or a family member will be hurt later, if credible enough to overcome the victim’s will and compel surrender of the property at the moment, can satisfy the fear element. The decisive question is whether the fear actually induced the victim to give up the property, not whether the threatened harm was instantaneous.

Maximum punishment

The maximum punishment for robbery is tiered according to whether a firearm was used. Robbery committed with a firearm is punishable by a dishonorable discharge, total forfeiture of all pay and allowances, and confinement for fifteen years. Robbery in all other cases is punishable by a dishonorable discharge, total forfeiture of all pay and allowances, and confinement for ten years. The firearm distinction is built into the punishment scheme itself, so the presence of a firearm is not merely an aggravating factor a court weighs but a circumstance that raises the authorized ceiling by five years.

These figures reflect the maximums under the current Manual for Courts-Martial, and the practical sentencing picture for offenses committed on or after 27 December 2023 is shaped by the sentencing reforms that took effect on that date, under which a military judge imposes the sentence in non-capital general and special courts-martial within the applicable sentencing parameters. Because the 2024 Manual restructured several maxima into offense categories, the precise parameter range for a given robbery should be confirmed against the current Manual at the time of any actual case. The longstanding maximum-confinement figures of fifteen and ten years remain the statutory anchor.

Robbery, larceny, and assault

Robbery is best understood as a compound of two simpler offenses, larceny under Article 121 and assault under Article 128, merged into a single greater crime. Because the assault is an inherent component of robbery, separately convicting an accused of both the robbery and the very assault used to accomplish it raises multiplicity concerns, since the same conduct would be punished twice. The assault is, in effect, absorbed into the robbery.

That absorption has limits. Where the accused inflicts violence beyond what was necessary to take the property, for instance, continuing to beat a victim after the property is already in hand, the excess violence is not part of the taking and may support a separate assault charge. The timing of the force also matters to the line between robbery and a sequence of distinct crimes. When the force is the means of the taking, the offense is robbery. When property is taken without force and force is used afterward purely to escape or retain it, courts must decide whether that later force was sufficiently connected to the taking to remain part of a single robbery, or whether it is better charged as a separate larceny followed by an assault.

Defenses

Because robbery requires a specific intent to steal, defenses that negate that intent are central. An honest claim of right, a genuine belief that the property taken was the accused’s own or that the accused had a legal right to it, negates the intent to steal and is a defense even if the belief was mistaken, so long as it was honestly held. Consent is a defense where the owner voluntarily parted with the property without coercion, since a taking by consent is neither against the victim’s will nor accomplished by force or fear. Voluntary intoxication, while not a defense to general-intent crimes, may be raised to show the accused was too impaired to form the specific intent to permanently deprive, though this is difficult to establish. Beyond the elements, the defense may contest identity, an issue that recurs in robbery cases because victims often observe the perpetrator only briefly and under stress, making the reliability of eyewitness identification and any lineup or photo-array procedure a frequent battleground.

Sources

• 10 U.S.C. 922 (Article 122, Robbery), via the Legal Information Institute: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/10/922
• 10 U.S.C. 922 (Article 122, Robbery), official text via the Office of the Law Revision Counsel: https://uscode.house.gov/view.xhtml?req=(title:10+section:922+edition:prelim)
• Manual for Courts-Martial, United States, Part IV (elements of robbery and the tiered maximum punishment for robbery with a firearm versus all other cases), published by the Joint Service Committee on Military Justice: https://jsc.defense.gov/

This article is for general informational purposes only and is not legal advice. It describes military law and procedure of public record, does not address any individual case, and does not create an attorney-client relationship.