OSAN AIR BASE, South Korea — An Air Force three-star general has decided to let stand the sentence of 1st Lt. Jason D. Davis, who is serving time in prison for abusing his position as head of an Air Force police team that patrolled the bar district outside Osan Air Base.
A military judge, Lt. Col. Eric Dillow, sentenced Davis last September to two years in prison and dismissal from the Air Force.
But under standard military legal procedure, it remained for Lt. Gen. Garry R. Trexler, convening authority in Davis’ general court-martial, to decide whether to amend the sentence or let it stand. Trexler is commander of the U.S. 7th Air Force at Osan Air Base. In a decision signed earlier this week, Trexler “left the ruling undisturbed,” said a spokesman at the 51st Fighter Wing here Friday.
Davis headed the 51st Security Forces Squadron’s town patrol, which patrols the Shinjang commercial district of bars, restaurants and shops.
Davis pleaded guilty to running illicit police undercover operations, accepting gifts and cash from club owners, maintaining illicit sexual liaisons with bar girls, breaking the U.S. military’s curfew that the town patrol had the duty of enforcing, being drunk and disorderly, having sex with women who were not his wife, illegally possessing weapons, illegally keeping an off-base apartment, using racial and ethnic slurs, filing a leave request with false information as to his intended destination and maintaining an improper relationship with a subordinate airman.
Trexler’s decision marks the final post-trial action in a case that caught and held the attention of the U.S. military community in South Korea and elsewhere. It also made its way before the secretary of the Air Force, who in October denied Davis’ request to be allowed to resign from the Air Force in lieu of court-martial.
Davis’ lawyers had asked Trexler to lighten the sentence.
Meanwhile, Davis has asked the Air Force for an appellate lawyer, a request he is entitled to make under the military’s legal system. It will be up to that lawyer to evaluate the court-martial and decide whether further legal action is warranted. Any appeal would have to be brought before the Air Force Court of Criminal Appeals.
