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Department of Defense form 491. Official designation: DD Form 491, Summarized Record of Trial, May 2000. Purpose: Summarized Record of Trial. Current edition not stated, status not stated.
Issued under not stated, with not stated as proponent. A DD number marks a Department-wide instrument: the same blank form serves every military department and the defense agencies, rather than one service alone.
Common users: service members regardless of branch, Defense civilian staff, and the offices that file, verify or retain the finished document.
Submission follows the schedule set by not stated and by local implementing procedures. This page provides the blank form for download and general orientation only.
Formats offered: PDF. Length: 23 pages. Fillable field count: roughly 181.
Every listed format is free to download. Modern pdf software handles the pdf files, with the caveat that browser-embedded viewers sometimes ignore field properties that a desktop reader honours.
What the form asks for
- Unit/command name.
- Location of judge advocate or general court-martial convening authority/JAG.
- Date record received.
- Final disposition, to file: date.
- Or findings and sentence to file: date.
- Acquittal or sentence set aside, to file: date.
- COpies of CMO disposed of: date.
- Remarks.
- Rank.
- Date signed.
- Chronology sheet. In the case of: rank and name of accused (last, first, middle initial).
- Date of alleged commission of earliest offense tried: day and month.
- Year.
- Date record forwarded to the Judge Advocate General: day and month.
- Year.
- Signature and rank of Staff Judge Advocate or Legal Officer.
- Action date.
- 1. Date accused placed under restraint by military authority.
- Cumulative elapsed days.
- 2. Charges preferred (date of affidavit).
- Cumulative elapsed days.
- 3. Article 32 investigation (date of report).
- 4. Date charges received by convening authority.
- Cumulative elapsed days.
The document is filled from the top down. Identification precedes substance, substance precedes certification. Fields lower on the page are commonly keyed to entries made above them.
The current edition is not stated. Superseded editions of DD forms are frequently rejected at the receiving office, since Department-wide forms change centrally and older layouts lose their field correspondence. Edition date appears in the lower corner of the printed blank.
Certification requires a signature in the designated block — ink on paper, or a digital signature where the receiving office supports one. Typing a name into the field does not constitute execution. CAC-based signing is the usual digital method for Defense forms.
Privacy Act notice: DD forms that collect personal data carry a Privacy Act Statement stating the authority for collection, the principal purpose, routine uses and whether disclosure is voluntary or mandatory. The statement is part of the form and should be read before entry, not after.
Errors seen most often involve edition mismatch, empty mandatory fields, illegibility after scanning, date formats inconsistent with the printed instruction, and unsigned or undated certification.
Field-level instructions appear on the form itself and in not stated. The directive is the controlling text.
The completed document moves to the office named in not stated or in local guidance. A retained copy is conventional practice.
Associated forms are traced by number within the series. Because the DD sequence is common to all military departments, no service qualifier is needed to identify a referenced form.
Some procedures pair a DD form with a service form. The two numbering systems are separate — service forms answer to a service proponent, DD forms to not stated or another Department office — and a matching number in each system means nothing.
Revision occurs when the prescribing directive is reissued, when the data collected changes, or when statutory notice language is amended. Verification of the edition date at download addresses all three.
The material here is descriptive. Nothing on the page constitutes legal or procedural advice, and no statement here determines whether a submitted form will be accepted. Such questions go to not stated, a servicing administrative office, or the authority identified in not stated.
Questions and answers
- What is DD Form 491?
- DD Form 491, Summarized Record of Trial, May 2000
- Which edition is current?
- Not stated by the publisher
- Who is responsible for this form?
- Not stated
- In which formats can it be downloaded?