YOKOSUKA, Japan — A 23-year-old Kitty Hawk sailor was sentenced to three years in prison with forced labor Thursday for negligent driving that caused a collision and killed a local man.
Petty Officer 2nd Class Joel Beza nodded to his lawyer after the sentence was declared by Judge Setsuo Fukushima in Yokohama District Court.
Led away by jail guards, he will be sent to Yokosuka Prison in Kurihama. Almost all male U.S. citizens who fall under the status of forces agreement and are sentenced to prison in Japan are confined there; 20 to 30 Americans are imprisoned there now, said Yokosuka Naval Base officials.
Forced labor consists of eight hours of work each day in one of four areas, officials said: Printing, such as business cards; soap making; auto-parts assembly or rug cleaning.
Beza was arrested Jan. 5 after his car ran a red light on Route 16 a few miles from the base and hit the car of Kenichi Kinoshita, 64.
Kinoshita died about an hour later at a local hospital of a ruptured blood vessel near his heart.
Another man and his young son received minor injuries when Kinoshita’s car smashed into theirs from the force of the impact, before coming to rest after hitting a tree.
At trial last week, Beza admitted he had been going between 50 mph and 60 mph in a 38-mph zone, even though two friends riding with him told him to slow down.
Asked why he hadn’t braked when the light turned yellow, he said he was afraid he’d lose control of his car. Beza did slam on the brakes when he saw Kinoshita’s car, according to trial testimony, but his action came too late to avert the collision.
The prosecutor asked that Beza receive a 4½-year sentence, just shy of the maximum allowed by Japanese law, citing the victims’ requests for stringent punishment. The defense asked that Beza receive a suspended sentence.
The judge told Beza he had two weeks to appeal his sentence to the Tokyo High Court. Asked whether Beza planned to do so, his lawyer, Midori Tanaka, said she didn’t know; the decision was Beza’s. Asked whether Beza’s sentence was usual, she declined comment.
In October, a 29-year-old petty officer from Sasebo Naval Base was sentenced to 34 months in prison after being convicted of the same offense in a fatal crash in April.
Petty Officer 2nd Class Berry John Gibson also had been speeding, going 75 mph, when he hit a car carrying a 46-year-old Sasebo woman and her 18-year-old daughter, killing the woman and seriously injuring the teen.
