Drill Sergeant Guilty of 18 Charges of Rape

An Army drill sergeant was found guilty Tuesday of 18 counts of rape against six women in the cornerstone case of the military’s sexual-misconduct scandal.

Staff Sgt. Delmar G. Simpson, 32, faces a maximum of life in prison for each rape count. His ultimate sentence is difficult to predict, however, legal experts said, because of the wide latitude military appeals courts have in reconsidering jury judgments.

Eugene Fidell, a Washington lawyer who is an expert on military justice, would predict only that Simpson faces a “double-digit” sentence. The trial’s sentencing phase begins Monday.

Simpson was also found guilty of 25 other criminal counts brought by prosecutors, who said that he created an environment of “fear, intimidation and control” at the Aberdeen Proving Ground to coerce sex from trainees under his supervision.

The six-member military jury, which deliberated for 31 hours, found him not guilty on seven charges, including one rape count. The jury reduced four other counts to lesser offenses.

Simpson stood at attention as the verdicts were read and did not visibly react. The soldier, who has been behind bars since his arrest in September, left the courtroom holding hands with his wife, who is stationed at an Army post in Virginia.

The verdicts indicated that the court-martial jury rejected defense efforts to tear down the credibility of the women who accused Simpson of rape. According to testimony presented by defense lawyers, some of the accusers are habitual liars and several were interested in Simpson sexually.

The defense also asserted that the women stood to benefit by helping prosecutors, arguing that military officials focused on the Simpson case to show their resolve in dealing with the sex scandal at Aberdeen and elsewhere in the Army.

The verdicts were a sorely needed victory for the Army, which has heard more than 1,200 sexual misconduct complaints and opened more than 300 criminal investigations at U.S. installations around the world since the charges first surfaced at Aberdeen late last year.

The sex scandal has forced the Army to rethink how it handles gender relations, an effort that is still underway.

At Aberdeen, 12 soldiers were charged with various degrees of sexual misconduct but four have received relatively minor punishment. Most of the remaining Aberdeen cases involve drill sergeants accused of having improper relationships with women trainees. Only two others face rape charges.

The fact that all 12 defendants are black, however, also has sparked controversy. Some black leaders have charged that Army officials have pressured witnesses to file trumped-up charges against the soldiers in their efforts to prove how serious they are about fighting sexual harassment.

And on Tuesday, Janice Grant, president of the NAACP chapter for the Aberdeen area, called the verdicts against Simpson “an attack on the leadership of the African-American male.”

Simpson’s accusers were four white women, one Hispanic, and one black.

Although Simpson’s defense attorneys barely contested some of the other charges against him, they had expressed hope that they would win acquittals on all the rape counts. When the verdicts were read, defense counsel Frank J. Spinner, was clearly taken aback.

A senior Army official said the sweeping verdicts against Simpson reflect the military jury’s view that a sergeant who is entrusted such authority must be held to a strict standard of behavior. “This reflects a consideration of the special circumstances that an obligation of trust mandates,” the officer said.

The prosecution contended that Simpson had used nearly absolute power over trainees to terrorize some of them and fasten on their weaknesses--including past crimes and indiscretions--to extort sex from them. Simpson, seeking sexual conquests in a competition with other drill sergeants, often ordered women to his office, two floors above the women’s barracks, then assaulted them, according to the prosecution.

He was described by the prosecution as a “mean, arrogant and manipulative person,” who reveled in his reputation as the harshest disciplinarian in the 143rd Ordnance Battalion.

Simpson already has pleaded guilty to having consensual sex with 11 trainees, including five of the rape victims. He could get up to 32 years in prison on those charges and five sexual-harassment offenses he admitted.

The sex scandal at Aberdeen and reports of sexual abuse elsewhere in the armed forces have caused women’s advocates to call for an independent investigation of how the military handles such complaints.

Rep. Jane Harman (D-Palos Verdes), a member of the House National Security Committee, reacted to the verdicts against Simpson by saying that the case pointed to the failure of the military’s reporting system and chain of command to deal with allegations of sexual abuse. She predicted that Congress would “do what we can” to correct the problem.

The court-martial jury was made up of four officers and two noncommissioned officers chosen by the commanding officer at Aberdeen Proving Ground. They included two male colonels, a male lieutenant colonel, a male captain, a male sergeant first class, and a female master sergeant. Four of the jurors are white, the others black.

Four votes were needed to return a guilty verdict on each count.