NAHA, Okinawa — A Japanese court Thursday dismissed an appeal of Dag Allen Thompson’s conviction in March on two counts each of rape and housebreaking.
Thompson, 36, formerly a Marine and a salesman for Exchange New Car Sales on Kadena Air Base, is serving a nine-year prison sentence for raping a 21-year-old Chatan woman in August 2004 and a 27-year-old Naha woman in June 1998. He also was convicted of breaking into the women’s homes to attack them as they slept.
Samples of Thompson’s DNA linked him to both crimes. In appealing the Naha General District Court’s March conviction, his attorney argued there was no proof the Naha case victim had been raped and that samples of semen found at the crime scenes were tainted.
The semen sample used from the Chatan crime scene came from a bedsheet the woman provided police.
Defense Attorney Toshimitsu Takaesu had argued that the woman actually was the sister of the true victim and assumed the victim’s role to save her sibling’s reputation. She testified she was asleep in her sister’s bed when she was attacked by Thompson, whom she later identified as her assailant.
Takaesu also argued that Thompson was coerced into signing a statement saying he’d barged into the woman’s home when drunk and ejaculated on her sheets but did not rape her.
“The defendant contended that the samples that were presented as evidence in [the] Naha case were, in fact, samples taken from the scene in [the] Chatan case. This court found that it was impossible to fabricate samples from [the] Chatan case to use them `as evidence for Naha case,” said Chief Judge Masaaki Kobayashi, reading from the decision reached by the three-judge Naha Branch of the Fukuoka High Court.
“The defendant makes the argument either because the defendant does not understand the significance of the evidence or intentionally distorts the significance of the evidence to match his argument,” he said. “It is therefore unacceptable by any measure.”
The court also ruled there were no grounds to believe the woman who reported the crime was not “the true victim in the case.”
Thompson, dressed in black pants, white shirt, tie and plastic prison slippers, stood before the three-judge panel, his hands folded in front of him, showing no emotion as he listened to the decision in Japanese and English. A shaved head had replaced the long locks he’d grown in 22 months’ confinement during his trial.
After the hearing, Takaesu said the court sidestepped his arguments and that he would consult with Thompson` about whether to appeal to Japan’s Supreme Court.
