Pacific edition, Thursday, June 21, 2007
CAMP FOSTER, Okinawa — A Marine corporal could face life in prison and a dishonorable discharge if found guilty of raping a lance corporal after a night of heavy drinking on Camp Hansen last November.
Testimony in the general court-martial of Cpl. Roberto Deloya, now assigned to Camp Courtney, began Tuesday; the case is expected to wrap up Wednesday. He is charged with burglary and rape in the alleged assault of the lance corporal Nov. 18 in her barracks room.
He also faces two charges of unlawful entry and several counts of disobeying and violating orders.
According to testimony, the alleged victim was drinking heavily with friends the night of the incident, playing games in her room that required the loser to gulp shots of alcohol and chug beers. The party later traveled to the nearby enlisted club at The Palms, where the drinking continued.
But the woman said she remembers nothing of what happened later.
“The next morning I woke up with people in my room asking me different things — how much I remembered,” she told the jury panel of three officers and three enlisted members. “I really didn’t know what was going on.”
Deloya lived in the same building as the woman and was in her unit. She said she had dated him a year before the incident but described it as a “one-night stand.”
Another lance corporal who lives in the barracks said she was up late doing her laundry and saw both Deloya and her friend, the alleged victim, being assisted to their rooms by other Marines. She helped place the lance corporal on her bunk.
When she returned to her room she said she found Deloya standing in her bathroom.
“He stepped toward me and turned the lights off,” she testified. “At that point I was afraid.”
She said another Marine appeared in the hallway just then and she had him take Deloya back to his room.
Later, she went to check on her friend and caught Deloya on top of her, she testified.
Cpl. Joshua Tyler, the barracks duty noncommissioned officer that night, testified that he was called to the woman’s room and found Deloya still in her bed. He said he ordered the corporal to get up and leave the room, but he refused.
Tyler left to get help. When he returned, Deloya was gone and the alleged victim was lying unresponsive in a fetal position in her bathroom. Tyler said he later discovered Deloya had left through a window in an adjoining room and slid down a drainpipe to the ground.
Deloya did not testify.
The chief defense witness was Navy Cmdr. Mark Russell, a psychologist at Marine Corps Air Station Iwakuni. He testified that alcohol can block a person’s ability to recall events and that during such blackouts a person can act normally and make decisions they do not remember later.
