On the evening of Jan. 21, 2012, attorney Neal Puckett stood on a balcony in Oceanside, California, and delivered an ultimatum to the United States Marine Corps. A few days earlier, Puckett had reached a deal with military prosecutors that would have let his client — a Marine staff sergeant facing nine counts of manslaughter — walk free. Now, the two-star general presiding over the court-martial was nixing the deal and sending the case back to a jury for verdict.