Petty Officer 2nd Class Dmitry Chepusov, a military broadcaster, was found strangled to death in the passenger seat of a car during a traffic stop in December 2013. Two American servicemembers have been charged in connection with his death. (Facebook photo)
RAMSTEIN AIR BASE, Germany — The first week of the court-martial of an American Forces Network technician charged with killing a colleague saw testimony from several key witnesses, but the panel who will decide the Air Force staff sergeant’s fate has yet to see forensic evidence.
That evidence, as well as testimony from medical and forensic experts and photographs from autopsies of slain Petty Officer 2nd Class Dmitry Chepusov are expected to be presented in the next two weeks as the trial of Staff Sgt. Sean Oliver continues.
Oliver has pleaded not guilty to all charges against him, which include premeditated murder, obstructing justice, making false official statements, aggravated assault and obstructing proceedings.
So far, the panel – similar to a civilian jury – has heard from a handful of witnesses who knew both the slain sailor and the accused, including two who testified they were in an adjacent room when Oliver is alleged to have strangled and beaten Chepusov.
The panel also watched more than four hours of video of Oliver’s initial statement to Air Force Office of Special Investigations agents, in which he implicated himself in Chepusov’s death.
Chepusov’s mother and two brothers have sat quietly in the gallery throughout the proceedings.
Accounts of what happened given by Air Force Staff Sgt. Shao-Lung Ping and Army Pvt. Cody Kramer, both prosecution witnesses who were present on the night of Chepusov’s death, differed from what Oliver told investigators in the video statement.
Kramer and Ping testified that whatever occurred between Oliver and Chepusov happened soon after the group – Oliver, Chepusov, Kramer, Ping and Staff Sgt. Thomas Skinkle – returned to Skinkle’s apartment after a night of drinking in downtown Kaiserslautern.
Kramer testified that at one point he went into the kitchen and saw Oliver on top of Chepusov, and retreated to the living room after Oliver told him, “Go away.”
Ping said he tried to leave the apartment, whose entrance is only accessible through the kitchen where Oliver and Chepusov were, and when he entered, Oliver yelled at him, “Shut the door.”
Ping didn’t shut the door all the way, he testified, and later saw Oliver twice kick Chepusov, who was lying on the floor.
In the video, Oliver said Chepusov was knocked out in a fall in the kitchen and became violent when, much later in the evening, Oliver tried to rouse him. Oliver said he choked Chepusov to knock him out again, but not kill him.
Kramer testified that Oliver told him Chepusov was “D-E-A-D dead. Dead dead.”
Ping, who was not part of the conversation, described overhearing the exchange, which he recounted in similar words. He differed with Kramer on where each man was standing in the apartment building when the conversation occurred. Oliver’s defense team sought to draw attention to those differences in Kramer’s and Pings’ accounts.
Maj. Shane McCammon, Oliver’s senior defense counsel, questioned OSI’s lead investigator on the case, Deric Hiscock, about the propriety of questioning Oliver, since he knew Oliver was assigned a German attorney after German police found Chepusov’s body in his car during a traffic stop Dec. 14, 2013.
Hiscock said an Air Force legal department advised him that because Oliver was remanded to U.S. custody, the German attorney didn’t matter and Hiscock wasn’t required to call him.
If Oliver had asked for a lawyer, Hiscock said, they would have had to stop the interrogation. Hiscock and another investigator tried to keep him talking.
“You knew he was incriminating himself, right?” McCammon said.
“Yes,” Hiscock said.
millham.matthew@stripes.com Twitter: @mattmillham
