FORT RUCKER, Alabama (AP) -- An Army officer was acquitted by a
military judge Wednesday of raping a soldier in her barracks room,
a claim the defense said she concocted to keep from being sent to
Iraq.
First Lt. Mike Hall, 35, had testified in his court-martial that a
night of dancing, flirting and kissing with 1st Lt. Jennifer Dyer,
26, last August led to consensual sex, not rape as she
alleged.
He said Dyer invited him into her room at Camp Shelby in
Mississippi and that, during two short episodes of intercourse, he
stopped both times when she said "No."
Hall was also acquitted on an adultery charge but convicted of
having sex without informing his partner that he had genital
herpes. The sex transmission charge is part of the military justice
code that refers to acts "unbecoming of an officer and a
gentleman."
Prosecutors wanted Hall to be sentenced to a year in prison or
dismissed from the military on the sex transmission charge. But the
judge, Col. Richard Gordon, ordered Hall to forfeit $1,000 of his
monthly pay of some $3,700 for four months. He said Hall would
receive a written reprimand.
The judge said Hall's deployment to Iraq to rejoin his unit would
be up to his company commander, who has said he is in favor of
it.
"I want the opportunity to still go serve with my unit," Hall said.
"I want to show what I did was a mistake."
The prosecutor, Capt. Richard Dodson, said the evidence against
Hall showed he "has no respect for Army values."
The judge acquitted Hall, who lives in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, on
the most serious charge of rape after a three-day trial at which
Dyer testified that Hall forced her to have sex twice. She said she
was too afraid of Hall to call for help in the barracks.
Dyer cried when the verdict was read and was escorted away without
making any statement. Dyer, a National Guard soldier from New
Jersey at the time, has since been honorably discharged and
returned to her law enforcement job with a sheriff's department in
New Jersey.
Dyer went public with her story on CBS' "60 Minutes," complaining
that Army investigators doubted her claim and put her in a hotel
room without access to a phone for two days.
Copyright 2005 The Associated Press.