Winning Multi-Victim Sexual Assault Court Martial Cases
Below is a transcript from the YouTube video:
How to Win Multi-Victim Sexual Assault Court Martial Cases
Tim Bilecki, Military Defense Attorney 0:00
What we’re going to talk about today is the military, is the war on sexual assault is the military creating victims where they otherwise didn’t exist. This is becoming an epidemic. This is something that’s happening nationwide and worldwide with the military, where they have an accused. And if they have a weak case, they’re essentially finding other people and turning them into victims. Now, you may be asking yourself, how does that happen? How does the military create military sexual assault victims for victims don’t exist?
Michael Waddington, Court-martial lawyer 0:41
Let me tell you, I just got back yesterday from a court-martial, and he ate out and off of the Air Force Base in Nebraska. We had five military sexual assault victims in what started as a kiss on the breast after a date. It started as a kind of a sexual harassment-type case. So OSI digs into the case, and they contact all of the women that my client has ever been married to. And he was married three times. And they contacted all his that all of his ex-girlfriends. And here’s where the scary part comes in. These women that they contacted had never made a complaint against him. And what I did was tell these women, do you know your husband is a serial rapist?
He’s raping women around the country across the world. We need to put this guy behind bars. And then the woman replied, said you don’t want I don’t recall him doing anything like that to me. And it took multiple phone calls to the point where they went back to his first wife of 23 years ago, repeatedly told her he’s a rapist made her feel guilty because she’s not, quote supporting rape victims.
Then, she, suddenly, after multiple times of being coached, remembers that there were a few times when he would initiate sexual contact when he was 21. And she was 19. And by the way, he’s in his 40s now, and they added that to the charge sheet as rape. They did the same thing with his other spouses. And they coached them and manipulated them into going along with this court-martial. But it’s scary when you’re facing life sentences, and you’re at the hands of OSI. And these jag prosecutors will try to do whatever it takes to win.
Tim Bilecki, Military Defense Attorney 2:19
Yeah, we see the same thing. Like what we’ve seen is it’s coming out of cell phones. And so often, what will happen is my client, they’ll go down to OSI or go down to see it. And of course, what do they always bring with them to bring their wallet, and they bring their cell phone because everyone cares about it. So I always tell people, if you’re getting called to see, Id leaves your cell phone at home, take this cell phone, or when you pick up an iPhone like this, leave it at home, because what they will do is they’ll ask you to put it in the locker, and they’ll say put it in the locker.
And they’ll give you a key because, of course, that’s the only key, right? Wrong. So what they’ll do is they will mind the data on the cell phone. And what I have seen, they’ll go through your chats. They’ll go through your instant messenger, eye messenger, plenty of fish account, and any type of social media app or dating app you have. And they will find girls that you’ve dated, find girls that you’ve met before, once that you’ve been online with. They watch you go out to them and talk to them and say,
Did you know that the individual you were in a dating relationship with is a rapist, and he’s being charged with rape, and he’s going around, we believe he’s a serial rapist? Then they say, Oh my god, I didn’t know that. And they said. This isn’t the type of individual we want on the streets. No different than your case, Mike, where they went to ex-wives,
Michael Waddington, Court-martial lawyer 3:31
Let me jump in here. You know, the scary thing is they will lie to these women. I’m trying a case next week that started as a one victim case. She thought it was just, you know, sexual harassment where they’re joking around. And they lied to her and said, You know, there have been multiple other women’s that made this allegation. And on top of calling every one of them ever dated or had any relations with, they will lie to you, they will lie to these women, when they’re like, I don’t think anything happened.
They say, “Listen, you might not have thought something happened.” But under the law, if you had one drink, or they tell him this nonsense to convince these women to be willing to make a statement, and some of them actually end up on the charge sheet and don’t even know they’re an actual victim. And they show up in court thinking they’re a witness. And they’re listed as a victim of a rape, for example.
Tim Bilecki, Military Defense Attorney 4:18
Yeah. And then the scary part. What happens is taking this to the next logical step, the accused gets charged, he goes down to the ADC’s office or the trial defense counsel‘s Office. And they say, well, you’re facing what amounts to multiple life sentences hundreds of years in confinement. There are multiple military sexual assault victims. These alleged victims don’t know each other. Lightning can’t strike twice. Oh my god, you must be guilty. I don’t know how to defend you. You better cop a plea. Then what happens is they will go to the prosecutor’s office and say, Listen, if you drop the charges on military sexual assault victims one and two, or plead them down, will plead the victim number one.
The prosecutor knows that number two and number three are garbage and that they’ve been fabricated out of thin air, and they’ll take a plea to number one. And now what they’ve done is they’ve leveraged evidence and leverage the charge sheet to get someone to plead guilty, where they’re gonna be a registered sex offender for the rest of their lives. And so what happens is a lot of the military council, not all of them, have no idea this is going on. And even if they did have no idea how to take a case like this and win it.
So maybe the next piece we can segment into is, Mike, you got a client that calls you, and he’s got a two victim or a three victim, or even as you put it, a five victim sexual assault, and I say victim very loosely. Okay. They call you, and they say every other lawyer I’ve talked to said my case is unwinnable. I can’t win; I’m going to prison. What do you say to them to say, yeah, we can win those? And
Michael Waddington, Attorney at Law 5:46
let’s talk about trial strategy. Most of my cases involve multiple military sexual assault victims. And what we’re finding is that when you aggressively go after the law enforcement and the people behind these allegations being made up, I look at him like, like, legs on a table. You know, you’re for victims. You have four legs on a table. You kick one leg over. Let’s say it’s a bogus charge. The prosecution’s vouching for these charges. CID, NCIS, OSI, and CGIS are vouching for these alleged military sexual assault victims. And then you kick that leg over.
What it does is it works the table, the government’s had cases, as well as a whole, gets wobbly, you kick the second leg over, you’re often going to take down the whole table if you do it right, and you know what you’re doing. You’re not a coward, and just please everyone out. You create doubt about the entire investigation. You create doubt about the credibility of the prosecutors who are putting bogus victims.
You take these bogus bundled cases, and when you attack it aggressively. You can knock all of the charges out. You use the bogus charges as a weapon against the government. I’m more concerned if I have one victim. Legitimate victim case where it’s one person, she reports immediately there, there’s some sort of injuries out there. That’s a tough case. But when you have Forex girlfriend’s coming out of the woodwork for no reason.
Tim Bilecki, Military Defense Attorney 7:09
They just looked at agreed the first piece of it is analyzing the case and not having fear. You can’t live your life with fear. And as you put together all these lawyers out there who say they’re trial lawyers, they want to be these heavy hitters, but they’re scared to go to trial because they’re scared of their powers. Okay, because it’s easier just to plead their clients out.
Dealing with Military Sexual Assault Victims
So you have to take a look at this and analyze this if you have five victims or four victims take each one separately, and how would I try each of it an individual case, then the key is, is always only, there’s always always, always a link. And what you typically find is one is linked two to two is linked to three, and three is linked to four, then you start systematically picking off these alleged victims.
And as you do that, you flip it in trial and flip it on the government and turn that into a base from a shield to a sword and show that law enforcement is creating military sexual assault victims out of thin air. So they shall week their charges are and put law enforcement on trial and put them on trial for good reason. And what happens is, if you can’t trust the messenger, you can’t trust the message. And the juries will have instant distrust, and a valid distrust might be a valid distrust of law enforcement, the prosecution, and the entire government’s case. So that’s what happened in the last couple of months, multi victim cases I have, then the government scratching their head said, how the heck did I lose this? And, you know, let them figure that out.
Michael Waddington, Court-martial lawyer 8:36
You know, it’s funny, they try to do that to stack the deck. And the question that the lieutenant colonel in the panel that I just did in voir, dire, when we were doing the jury questioning, you know, what were your first impressions when you read the charge sheet? He’s not a dummy.
He says I was wondering where these charges came from. One of them is from 1993. That was very suspicious. Now that’s something that took prosecutor didn’t think alike. So you got a 23-year-old case, all of a sudden, they are saying, and then these women reported, and then we brought out that they didn’t report OSI to harass them.
Tim Bilecki, Military Defense Attorney 9:09
But yeah, I think that’s a great point. You have to be fearless, and you have to attack. You have to go on the offensive. But I think the more, the bigger issue as we kind of wrap up this episode is that this is happening. It’s out there. These cases can be one, but you have to be aware that this is happening. And then how do we stop that at a macro level? And I think the way to stop that is to continually expose the prosecution and expose NCIS and see ID and OSI for these underhanded dirty tactics in court.
Michael Waddington, Attorney at Law 9:39
Damn, I completely agree, but they’re going to keep coming up with new stuff. And this morning, the war on sexual assault is just getting ramped up. We kind of thought we were getting coming to possibly the beginning of the end. They’re now moving into college campuses, and they’re doing the same sort of witch hunt technique now against a young man in college, and I say this every episode. Suppose you don’t have a lawyer that knows what they’re doing. And it does this all the time. And it is fearless.
That is tried hundreds of trials. You’re screwed for the most part because you’re going to be scared. The numbers of these cases with bundled alleged military sexual assault victims are solely designed to scare and intimidate, ease inexperience. And some of them are young, inexperienced attorneys who mean well, but it’s scary going into a five victim, court-martial, or three victims or to the victim. If you’re a lawyer who’s been doing it for six months, it should be scary because your clients are facing two life sentences.
Tim Bilecki, Military Defense Attorney 10:33
So if you’re watching this, or if you have a case that you’re facing, where you have 2, 3, 4, or 5 victims, and you need serious representation, give us a call, we can walk you through it. Or if you’re in a position where your military lawyers told you, you have to plead guilty because there’s no other way around, or you’ve talked to some other civilians, and they all say your case can’t be one. So if you call Mike, call me, we’ll walk you through, and we’ll show you that these cases can be one.
Michael Waddington, Court-martial lawyer 10:57
Alright Tim, until next time, good luck with your next case. And I look forward to talking to you again. Thanks, Mike. Take care