Army officer acquitted of raping soldier

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, of Nashville, Tenn., was also acquitted on an adultery charge but convicted of having sex without informing his partner that he had genital herpes.

Hall 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.”

The military judge, Col. Richard Gordon, was to hold a sentencing hearing on the sex transmission charge later Wednesday.

In closing statements, defense attorney Victor Hall said Dyer, a National Guard soldier from New Jersey at the time, was desperate to avoid deployment to Iraq and contrived the rape claim as a last resort.

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“Michael Hall became a target of her action,” he said.

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The prosecutor, Capt. Richard Dodson, said the evidence against Hall showed he “has no respect for Army values.”

Dyer went public with her story on CBS’s “60 Minutes,” complaining that Army investigators doubted her claim and put her in a hotel room without access to a phone for two days. After being given two weeks’ convalescent leave by the Army, Dyer refused to return to Camp Shelby and was not there when her unit was sent to Iraq.

Dyer has since been honorably discharged and returned to her law enforcement job with a sheriff’s department in New Jersey.