Bilecki Wins Full Acquittal in Army Captain’s Domestic Violence and Strangulation Trial
June 2025
Camp Humphreys, Korea
Army Captain – O-3
Allegations: UCMJ Article 128b Domestic Violence; UCMJ Article 128 Assault; UCMJ Article 128b Strangulation
Facts
A domestic violence allegation in an overseas military marriage does not stay inside the marriage. It goes to CID, command, trial counsel, and, in serious cases, an officer panel thousands of miles from home. That is what happened here. The government tried to turn a honeymoon fight in Hawaii into a strangulation case and took an Army Captain and pilot to a fully contested officer-panel general court-martial in Korea. The panel acquitted him of everything.
By October 2023, the marriage was already in trouble. They had fought in June and July. Divorce had come up by August. The condo purchase in Korea was already moving in the background. On 3 October 2023, while on the Big Island for their honeymoon, they argued over a car key, a late start to the day, and the same marriage problems they had been carrying for months. She said he forced her onto the bed, put his hand on her neck, and choked her for about ten seconds. He said she put her hands on him first and he slapped her hand away.
The government did not just have to prove what allegedly happened in that hotel room. It also had to explain everything that came after it. She did not leave Hawaii. The next day they went to Volcanoes National Park. After that they went snorkeling. Then they went scuba diving. She signed a scuba waiver stating she was in good mental and physical condition. They flew back to Korea on 10 October. The next day she re-engaged with Kookmin Bank about the mortgage process they had already started. On 14 October, he transferred roughly 81,000,000 KRW for the condo purchase. On 31 October, they closed on the condo together. She did not report the Hawaii allegation to CID until 7 March 2024. She filed for divorce in Korean court on 15 March 2024.
That timing mattered. The defense position was that the allegation surfaced when it did after the marriage had collapsed and the property fight was live, and that a domestic violence conviction in a U.S. court-martial would have carried real weight in the Korean divorce case. The defense tried the case through the timeline, the property dispute, and the months that followed the trip.
We did not handle it like a routine one-witness domestic allegation. We traveled to Korea multiple times, interviewed witnesses, and litigated motions. The defense team included Trent Struttmann of Cyber Agents as the digital forensic examiner. The government had the phones, the texts, and the trip photos, but it produced only a filtered extraction from the alleged victim's phone after CID had already created a broader extraction. That led to real motions work over missing digital evidence, deleted extraction material, and what the government chose to preserve versus what it chose to present.
Cross-examination drove the trial. We walked through the prior marital violence, the earlier divorce discussions, the Hawaii texts, the flights she claimed she could not get, the urgent-care texts, the honeymoon photos, the scuba activity, the bank records, the mortgage process, the 81 million KRW transfer, the condo closing, the delayed CID report, and the divorce filing.
The government asked the panel to decide the case on one person's account of a 10 second event in a private hotel room. The defense put the full timeline in front of the panel, including the marriage, the money, the property, and the five months that followed.
The proof had other problems. There was no report in Hawaii, no medical evidence from Hawaii, no useful corroboration from the resort, and no contemporaneous digital trail that matched the version of events the government asked the panel to accept.
The government took an Army Captain to a fully contested officer-panel general court-martial for domestic violence and strangulation. The panel acquitted him of all charges and specifications.
The marriage was over. The Army career was not.
Result: Full acquittal. Not guilty of all charges and specifications.
FAQ
Q: How did Bilecki use the months after the honeymoon?
He compared the allegation with the actual texts, travel, activities, bank records and property transactions. The defense also examined the timing of the report and divorce filing. Continuing a relationship or delaying a report does not prove an assault did not occur. Here the detailed chronology supported the defense's challenge to the specific account and its argument about the property dispute.
Q: Why did the broader phone extraction matter?
The defense needed the surrounding messages and photographs, not just the filtered production. With Trent Struttmann's forensic assistance, Bilecki litigated the missing material and used the available digital record in cross-examination. The officer panel heard the full defense and acquitted our client of every charge and specification.
Prior results do not predict future outcomes.