Ex-officer acquitted of sex crime

By Clair Johnson
The Billing Gazette

BILLINGS, Mont. — A federal jury acquitted a former law enforcement officer on Thursday of sexually abusing a young girl in Lame Deer nearly five years ago.

It was the second time the defendant, Gerald Hill, 62, a retired Bureau of Indian Affairs police officer in Lame Deer, was tried on the charge. The jury deliberated about an hour and a half in the two-day trial before finding Hill not guilty of aggravated sexual abuse.

In 2006, a jury convicted Hill after deliberating more than seven hours. Hill was sentenced to 11 years and three months in prison. Hill appealed, and the 9th U.S. Court of Appeals reversed his conviction last year and ordered a new trial after finding that the prosecutor erred and violated Hill’s rights.

The appellate court ruled that Assistant U.S. Attorney Marcia Hurd’s questioning of a law enforcement witness and her closing comments about Hill’s silence to investigators after being advised of his rights violated his Fifth Amendment right to remain silent.

Hill and the girl, who was 11 years old at the time, again gave conflicting accounts this week about what happened the night of Oct. 16, 2003, at Hill’s house.

Hill and his family were moving into a new trailer home and the girl, her mother and her younger sister were helping with the move.

Both families were longtime friends, and the girl was going to sleep over at the Hills while her mother and sister returned home.

The trial turned on whose testimony the jury believed.

Hill testified Thursday that he did not sexually abuse or molest the girl while she was sleeping on couch in his living room. Hill said he had finished working on his computer on a lesson for a Sunday school class he was teaching and saw the girl sleeping in an awkward position.

He put his hand under her head and back and moved her, he said.

The girl, now 15 years old, testified that she was sleeping on the couch when Hill put his hand down her shirt and pants and fondled her. The girl said she was too scared to say anything.

“I was like a stone. I was terrified,” she told the jury Wednesday.

Afterward, the girl said, she asked Hill’s wife if she could use their telephone. She called her mother three times, leaving two messages before talking to her mother on the third call.

She told her mother she was scared and wanted her to come get her.

The girl also admitted that she had lied earlier, when she was in the fourth grade, when she told a story about a man in a pickup who approached her. Her mother and a school counselor believed the story until the girl admitted two days later that she had lied to get attention.

Under cross examination, the girl said she overdosed on pills three months ago but denied it was because her sister was getting attention for receiving good grades.

In closing arguments, Hurd urged the jury not to write off the girl because she told a lie earlier.

Sometimes good people do bad things, but that doesn’t mean they can’t be believed again, she said.

Defense attorney Vern Woodward said, “This kid is hurting, but she’s not hurting because of Gerry Hill.” The girl’s hurt began before Gerald Hill and manifests itself in bad behavior and damaging statements that continue today, he said.

“Gerry Hill is an honest man.”