Maximum Sentence:
-
Dishonorable Discharge
-
23 years confinement
-
Total forfeiture
-
Reduction to E-1
-
Federal felony conviction
Facts:
An Army Private at Camp Casey faced aggravated assault, communicating a threat and violation of a general order after an alleged assault on a female Soldier. A second alleged assault brought more charges. The government dismissed the first charge sheet and preferred the old and new allegations together. The case went through another Article 32 hearing before the charges were referred again.
Our client waited in pretrial confinement while the government sought a guilty plea. Tim Bilecki refused to let the pressure of confinement substitute for moving the case to trial. We demanded a speedy trial from the convening authority.
The charges still were not brought back to trial promptly. After more than 15 weeks of pretrial confinement, Bilecki took the delay to the military judge through an Article 10 motion. At the hearing, we put the government’s failure to move the case forward beside its efforts to obtain a plea from a confined Soldier.
The military judge found the delay unreasonable and dismissed both the original and additional charges with prejudice. The work that ended this prosecution was the demand for a trial and the motion holding the government to that obligation.
Prior results do not predict future outcomes.