An Army Sergeant was charged with multiple specifications of sexual assault after his former girlfriend accused him of having sex with her while she was too intoxicated to consent.
In this case, the Sergeant was in a romantic relationship with another Soldier in his unit and broke up with her after a night of sex and drama after a Halloween party. After the breakup, the alleged victim became interested in the Sergeant’s friend and would make sure the Sgt was aware of her newfound interest.
In December, less than two months after the breakup, the alleged victim invited the Sergeant and his friend (the one she was interested in) to drink at her barracks room. Inside the barracks room, the Soldiers used their phones to make videos of each other throughout the night. These videos would become a key piece of evidence.
These videos depicted the so-called victim flirting with the Sergeant’s friend as well as with the Sergeant, instigating sexual conversation and plying the two male Soldiers with alcohol. Towards the end of the night, after flirting with the two male Soldiers, the alleged victim took the Sergeant’s hand and the other Soldier’s hand, placed them on her private areas and made several sexually charged statements to them. After this touching, the video was turned off, and the alleged victim said, “It’s bath time.” The next video depicted the alleged victim naked in her bathtub with the SGT and his friend. They were acting, we can say, comfortable with each other.
After the bath, the video turned off, and the three of them engaged in fully consensual sexual acts in her barracks room. The following morning, the group watched the videos and thought nothing of it. Later, the alleged victim made an allegation of sexual assault against the Sergeant, claiming that she was “blacked out” and was too intoxicated to consent. Interestingly enough, she never made an allegation against the other Soldier. She then used that allegation to get medically (honorably) discharged from the Army and draw a sizeable paycheck for the “trauma” the incident caused her. The Sergeant was later called into CID on numerous occasions, and after being lied to by the CID agents regarding a polygraph he took, they obtained a “confession” from him. After this bogus “confession” was taken, an Article 120 UCMJ sexual assault attorney, Tim Bilecki, was retained to try the case.
Bilecki’s office conducted a complete investigation and exposed during the trial that the facts our client “confessed” to were not supported by the physical or forensic evidence in the case and that CID was able – by coercive interrogation tactics – to get our client to admit to things that simply never happened.
Tim Bilecki’s team brought on one of the country’s leading forensic psychologists to consult with the defense team on the dynamics of a false confession and on the impact of alcohol on memory and blackouts.
Mr. Bilecki tried the case and absolutely demolished the government’s case, from jury selection to the closing statement.
The jury deliberated for approximately 3 hours and fully acquitted our client.
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