Marines convicted on sexual assault, child porn charges, other cases pending
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Prosecutors have convicted several Marines in recent weeks for crimes including rape and child pornography, and dozens of similar cases continue to percolate through the military criminal justice system.
The cases are coming to light due to a series of Freedom of Information Act requests filed by The San Diego Union-Tribune over the past four months. Documents released by the Marines reveal some of the most serious cases tied to senior leaders like ex-Chief Warrant Officer E. DeLeon Jr.
At a Camp Pendleton court-martial last month, a military judge convicted DeLeon of possessing and distributing child pornography. Although the judge sentenced him to seven years behind bars, a pretrial agreement capped the Marine’s imprisonment at five years.
Highly redacted records trace DeLeon’s crimes back to Nov. 26, 2016, on Camp Pendleton. He distributed a digital image of a child engaging in sex. Three days earlier, he communicated to an unidentified person his desire to molest “a little girl,” an act he thought “sounds amazing,” according to his criminal records.
Camp Pendleton Lance Cpl. M. F. Currington also was found guilty last month of abusing anabolic steroids and sexually abusing a child. He was sentenced to three years behind bars. Assigned to 2nd Battalion, 4th Marines, Currington’s charges stemmed from a late 2016 probe into steroid and drug paraphernalia possession, according to records released to the Union-Tribune.
Another Camp Pendleton Marine, Lance Cpl. B.J. Morton of 1st Battalion, 11th Marines, also was convicted last month of possessing and distributing child pornography. He was reduced to private and given a bad conduct discharge but a pretrial agreement capped his confinement at 1 ½ years behind bars.
He was incarcerated on Aug. 14 after investigators accused him of possessing three videos and other sexually explicit images of children, according to his records.
A fellow member of his artillery regiment, Marine E.F.Hernandez-Ramirez, faces multiple domestic abuse charges filed in September.
Assigned to 2nd Battalion, 11th Marines at Camp Pendleton, he’s accused of punching an unnamed woman in the head and torso, slamming her head against a wall, hitting her head with a coffee cup and twice choking her during five incidents that allegedly occurred in September, October and November of 2016.
He was charged with four more specifications tied to several Murietta incidents that allegedly occurred in late 2016 and early 2017. He’s accused of punching a woman in the head and body three times and wrapping a belt around her neck to choke her. The records failed to specify if it was the same woman in all the incidents, and Camp Pendleton officials declined comment.
Several cases involve Marines accused of sneaking into other service member’s rooms to assault or grope them.
For example, Lance Cpl. J.P. Hill was convicted last month of sexual assault causing harm, abusive sexual contact and making an indecent recording. Assigned to 1st Marine Expeditionary Force headquarters inside Camp Pendleton, he crept into the room of a fellow Marine at night to assault her and photographed her when she was nude, according to records released to the Union-Tribune.
He was sentenced to two years in prison, reduction to private and a dishonorable discharge.
L.M. Schmidt, a Marine assigned to Aviation Logistics Squadron 13 in Yuma, Arizona, likewise was charged on Aug. 17 with entering an unnamed service member’s barracks to touch the person’s hips in order to gratify his sexual desires, according to the court records.
His unit falls under the command of the Miramar-based 3rd Marine Aircraft Wing.
Another Yuma Marine, Sgt. C. S. Panatta, is accused of raping a child under the age of 12 years old there in 2016. Commanders also filed a pair of charges tied to lewd incidents involving another child under the age of 16 that allegedly occurred around the same time.
He faces a third set of charges linked to child abuse that allegedly occurred in 2014 and 2015 at Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center, Twentynine Palms, in San Bernardino County. He’s accused of beating a child with a fly swatter, punching a child’s face, slamming a child in the head with a door and attempting to suffocate a child with a pillow, according to records released to the Union-Tribune.
Assigned to Marine Operational Test and Evaluation Squadron 1, Panatta has been in pretrial confinement for a year.
Another Marine assigned to an aviation unit, P. Wiredu of Miramar’s Marine Wing Headquarters Squadron 3, was charged in 2015 with allegedly committing three 2013 rapes in or near San Diego, according to heavily redacted records released to the newspaper.
Citing the ongoing cases, Marine officials declined comment.
Five other cases are linked to Camp Pendleton logistic units.
Assigned to Headquarters Regiment, 1st Marine Logistics Group, Lance Cpl. Christopher R. Kylus faces court-martial for a series of unwanted groping and kissing incidents that allegedly occurred on base in 2016 and 2017, according to records released to the Union-Tribune.
Sgt. G. Green Jr. of Camp Pendleton’s Combat Logistics Regiment 15, is accused of attempting to scuttle his court-martial case for reckless driving by asking a Murrietta mechanic to create fake invoices and lie about an acceleration glitch dogging his vehicle.
On Dec. 10, 2016, he was clocked driving an estimated 100 miles per hour near Carlsbad. He was charged seven months later with speeding on Camp Pendleton, according to his records.
A fellow Marine in his regiment, Cpl. E. Anderson III, allegedly vandalized a pair of autos inside Camp Pendleton last spring. He allegedly used paint remover to cause $3,437 in damages to vehicles belonging to a corporal and a sergeant.
Another Marine there, A.L. Jordan of 1st Supply Battalion, has been charged with fondling and raping an unidentified Camp Pendleton victim on Aug. 6, 2017. He also allegedly choked her neck with force likely to cause death or grievous bodily harm, according to records released to the Union-Tribune.
He was confined to the Camp Pendleton Brig alongside a Marine listed only as “J. Norman” in heavily redacted documents provided to the Union-Tribune.
On Jan. 9, Norman pleaded guilty to the wrongful use of controlled substances and was sentenced to three months in the brig, reduction to private and a bad conduct discharge.
Assigned to Headquarters Battalion, 1st Marine Division, he was suspected of distributing cocaine on base between early 2016 and mid-2017, records reveal.
Camp Pendleton officials declined comment on his case.
Lance Cpl. Tomas Rocha Jr., a member of Camp Pendleton’s Security and Emergency Services Battalion, has been in pretrial confinement since Sept. 6, following multiple charges for abandoning his guard post, fondling an unnamed woman and telling another that he would fine her $1,000 if she didn’t let him grope her breast.
“The alleged conduct is in direct contradiction of the Marine Corps’ values of honor, courage and commitment, but it is important to note that every Marine is considered innocent until proven guilty,” said Camp Pendleton spokesman Anthony A. Lopez in an emailed statement to the Union-Tribune.
Only one of the records provided to the Union-Tribune involves a sailor.
Navy Hospital Corpsman 3rd Class Darrius D. Upshaw remains in post-trial confinement at Camp Pendleton after appealing a pair of sex crime convictions.
Prosecutors contend that he twice went to an Oceanside bar in 2014 and 2015, sidling up to an inebriated male Marine before identifying himself as a Navy medic who would give him a safe ride home.
Once in his car, he fondled them and, in one case, allegedly raped a Marine who was too drunk to fight back, according to records released to the Union-Tribune.
A military jury found Upshaw of Marine Raider Support Battalion guilty and he was sentenced to 10 years in prison and a dishonorable discharge, but he contested his conviction and the United States Navy-Marine Corps Court of Criminal Appeals in Washington, D.C., partially agreed with him.
In a May 31 decision, the tribunal ruled that Upshaw’s judge erred in allowing prosecutors to use his sexual misconduct in the first case to suggest a propensity to commit a similar crime in the second.
Although they affirmed Upshaw’s convictions for abusive sexual contact, the appellate judges set aside his sexual assault conviction for a retrial slated later this year at Camp Pendleton.
It took months for the Union-Tribune to collect military criminal records routinely available to citizens at civilian courtrooms or even other armed forces bases worldwide.
Policies instituted by officials at 1st Marine Expeditionary Force, 1st Marine Division, 3rd Marine Air Wing, Miramar Marine Corps Air Station, Training Command and Marine Corps Recruit Depot have delayed or blocked release of criminal justice information, often for months after a court-martial trial has concluded.
Although the local military units publish a docket of upcoming prosecutions, commanders can restrict access to courtrooms and the services no longer post information about scheduled Article 32 hearings — where the bulk of evidence against a defendant is often heard before a plea agreement is struck.
After charging suspects, Marine commands typically don’t share even the full names of defendants or detail why they were believed to have committed crimes, beyond a bare recitation of their charges. That forces citizens interested in cases to seek often highly-redacted records through federal laws designed to shine light on government operations taxpayers fund.
The Union-Tribune awaits decisions in four Freedom of Information Act appeals filed against the Naval Criminal Investigative Service, Marine Corps Recruit Depot and the Marines’ Virginia-based Training Command after they refused to release records tied to three suspicious deaths at Camp Pendleton and a rape charge filed against a Marine assigned to San Diego’s boot camp.
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