Military Justice: Is a trial that takes years inhumane?

Progress, if there is such an entity, has taken place in many a society's system of justice.  In Biblical times, we remember, the value underlying punishment of alleged crimes was a eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.  Then codes evolved which took into account mitigating circumstances and the assumption that the supposed miscreant could be rehabilitated.  In addition, the U.S. kind of justice embodied the mandate against what was assessed to be inhumane.

So, we wonder when we read in THE NEW YORK TIMES, that the military system of justice can involve a trial which takes years.  Immediately that brings to mind the kind of law which prevailed in the dark times and novels of Charles Dickens.  Robert Bales will have to endure that.  In itself that seems too much for any human being to have to go through.