Serviceman Convicted Of Rape In Japan

A Japanese court convicted a U.S. airman Thursday of raping a Japanese woman and sentenced him to 32 months in jail, concluding a case that deepened resentment toward American troops stationed in Okinawa.

U.S. Air Force Staff Sgt. Timothy Woodland went on trial last September after being charged with raping the 20-year-old woman in a parking lot outside a popular Okinawa nightclub on June 29.

Prosecutors had demanded a three-year prison sentence for Woodland, who was tried at the Naha District Court. Naha is Okinawa's capital city.

The airman pleaded innocent to the allegations, saying that he had consensual sex with the woman. His home town and the name of the woman have not been released. Rape convictions in Japan typically carry prison sentences of two to 15 years in prison.

"It is nothing but rape and the crime is horrendous," the presiding judge said in his verdict read out to a packed courtroom.

Woodland, wearing a beige suit and led by police into court handcuffed with a rope bound around his waste, said he felt sick as the judge was finishing his verdict, and asked if he could sit down.

Prosecutors had demanded a three-year prison sentence, accusing Woodland of raping the woman in the central Okinawa town of Chatan at around 2:00 a.m. on June 29.

Woodland had pleaded not guilty, saying the sex was consensual, while the woman has rejected defense suggestions that she had given signs of consent as "outrageous."

The incident stoked smoldering resentment in a part of Japan where tens of thousands of U.S. troops are based and where residents are highly sensitive to military-related crimes.

Okinawa has less than one percent of Japan's total land mass but is home to 26,000 of the 48,000 U.S. military personnel in the country. Many residents believe they are bearing an unfair share of the burden of supporting U.S.-Japan security ties.

Okinawans critical of the U.S. military presence had said before the ruling that even three years would not be enough, citing past sentences of rape cases involving U.S. servicemen.

In the infamous 1995 rape of a 12-year-old Japanese school girl on Okinawa, the three U.S. military personnel who were found guilty each got a prison sentence ranging from six years and six months to seven years.

But lawyers said three years for rape was the norm in Japanese courts, adding that under Japanese criminal law, two years in prison is the minimum for rape, and that it is rare for the sentences to be over five years.

The incident itself and Washington's delay in handing over Woodland to Japanese authorities soured relations between the two countries, renewing calls for a revision in the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA), the pact governing the conduct of the U.S. military in Japan.

Under the treaty, the United States need not hand over suspects until they are charged by Japanese prosecutors, except in the case of "heinous crimes" such as rape and murder.

It took Washington a week to hand over Woodland, due to doubts over whether he would be given fair treatment by Japanese police.

Japanese law generally provides less protection for defendants than in the United States.

In particular, human rights activists have charged that Japanese police use the lengthy detention period -- up to 23 days -- to force confessions out of suspects.

Japanese police gained custody of Woodland after Washington saw local resentment towards the U.S. presence rising due to the case.

In the 1995 rape, the United States did not hand over the suspects until they were indicted, which ignited local wrath, leading an unprecedented 85,000 Okinawans to take part in an anti-U.S. military rally.

Woodland, who had been stationed in Japan for four years before the incident, was only the second serviceman to be handed over before indictment.