Yonhap reports that Seoul High Court has overturned the conviction on a 21-year old private who was originally sentenced to 3 years in the pen for attempting to rape a female police officer. A 22-year-old sergeant who was convicted with him and sentenced to 3 years and 6 months in jail, meanwhile, had his sentence cut to a year and a half with a two-year stay of execution.
The sergeant was convicted of pushing a plain-clothes officer to the ground and attempting to rape her in a unisex bathroom in a building in Cheongdam-dong last April. The private was convicted of being the lookout while the attempted rape happened.
The appeals court ruled that when one looked at the statements given by both the defendants and the victims, there was no evidence that the private conspired or took part in the rape, noting that witness testimony placing the private in the bathroom was spotty.
In reducing the sergeant’s sentence, the court actually accepted his claim that he was in a physically and mentally weakened state at the time of the attack. It said, “We acknowledge the point that he was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder following his participation in the Iraq War, and that he currently suffers from alcohol dependency syndrome after taking forbidden drugs such as alcohol and tobacco to forget his symptoms, and that even on the day of the crime, he had drunken more than his drinking capacity.”
My reaction? The private, well, if the court said he wasn’t there, well, so be it, but reducing the sentence of a guy convicted of trying to rape a cop because he was drunk at the time? WTF? How can you expect English teachers to stop toking up when clearly the judiciary is on crack?
Oh, and did I mention he tried to rape a cop?
Yeah, I know what you’ll say — “Well, if it were a Korean man, the court would have gone easy on him because he was drunk.” Well, perhaps. But still, this is an absolutely atrocious decision. Outrageous, really.
The Herald Gyeongje, meanwhile, reports that controversy has already started. Women’s groups and and left-wing civic groups are “shocked” by the decision, despite it “being clear that the crime was premeditated.” Netizens, meanwhile, are ashamed.
Jeong Yong-jun, the director of the Peace Alliance of JinboCorea, called the decision a “typical political judgment.” He said, “One can only see it as a political decision made in consideration of the United States and negotiations between Korea and the United States. She might have been in plain clothes, but one cannot reduce sentences and acquit [criminals] for the serious crime of premeditatedly attempting to rape a police officer.”
Netizens, meanwhile, are ashamed… or so says the Herald Gyeongje. Said one, “Many people call our country, ‘Small but Strong Korea,’ but to America, we must seem like nothing.” Another, meanwhile, said it appears nothing has changed since the time two middles school girls were killed after being struck by a US military vehicle in 2002.
Well, anyway, there are some 829 comments on the Yonhap piece, so read them at your own leisure.
Personally, I don’t think this will blow up into anything — especially since the election is over — but man, this leaves a bad taste in one’s mouth.
UPDATE: From the Stars and Stripes:
[Head judge] Cho said he reduced and suspended Basel’s sentence because it was a “failed attempt” at rape; Basel was highly intoxicated at the time of the attack; he’d suffered trauma during a deployment to Iraq; and the 10 million won (about $10,905) settlement paid the woman after the first trial.
“It is a good and fortunate day for all of us,” said Basel’s attorney, Jin Hyo-geun. “They are set free finally and able to go back to their base.”
Lt. Col. Brodrick Bailey, an 8th Army spokesman, said late Monday that the soldiers will be returned to their units.
Bailey was unable to say whether they face any U.S. Army legal action.
Ridiculous.
23 Comments
Fucking disgusting. Even when they’re cops, women here are no better than property. This culture deserves what ever it gets.
And while we’re at it, USFK needs to figure out why they keep getting these pieces of shit, and how do they keep getting through the screening process during enlistment.
Start paying soldiers more money for starters, and stop recruiting them from poor neighbourhoods and shopping malls.
Fucking disgusting. Even when they’re cops, women here are no better than property. This culture deserves what ever it gets.
This culture deserves whatever it gets? How lovely. Why don’t you take that and put it to some use where it really matters, places where sharia law is practiced and women are really treated like property, and give em what they richly deserve? I’m sure the Army can arrange a reassignment, seeing as how you’re so concerned about that sort of thing. That is, if you’re not a pussy and if Hassan doesn’t chop your balls off for your troubles.
Typical ignorant grunt dickhead.
“‘Small but Strong Korea,’ but to America, we must seem like nothing.””
Was this an American judge’s decision?
#4.
Robert isn’t a servicemember in the USFK.
And I believe there are better ways of expressing disagreement without resorting to personal attacks.
And neither is “The William G”, who Netizen Kim quoted, yet still managed to misunderstand.
He’s posting past his bedtime again.
Reduced to 1 and a half years for attempted rape - yet the penalty for actual rape in France is only 2 years.
Average sentence in the US for attempted rape is 128 days. But there is wide variation: Some guys get 10 days, some far outliers may be sentenced to life (recidivists, usually).
this is no surprise as it happens all the time in korean courts but it does show a lack of understanding and bail out of really bad behavior
hell i have on many many nights consumed way more than my capacity and never attempted to rape anyone
as for the guy who was the supposed look out i dont think he was ever guilty it would make more sense if he was a look out and outside the bathroom door and not outside trying to get a cab
Man oh man, drunkenly try to rape a policewoman in the United States and you’ll be dead before you hit the floor — these guys got off real easy (although it’s within the normal bounds of Korean court’s practice, netizens have no cause to be up in arms); they should be thankful to the end of their days.
So what did we learn today?
1. The fewer U.S. troops in Korea, the better. At the risk of joining him in a gross overgeneralization of my own, I have no doubt that Netizen Kim represents the intellectual level of the discussion in much of Korean society. How I long for the day when people like Netizen Kim never have to see a soldier on their streets. You can clearly see how politically, this situation will only get worse, no matter who is in the Blue House. Let Korea defend itself. I’m sure we could round up at least 29,500 Korean draft dodgers in Los Angeles and Orange county alone.
2. Giving Korean courts more jurisdiction over U.S. military personnel won’t make the Netizen Kim mob or anyone else happy when then their rate of incompetence is so unacceptably high. I can’t speak to their ability to give fair trials to Koreans, but they certainly screwed up a high percentage of the GI cases I read. You can get a fair trial in a Korean court if you’re dead-to-rights guilty and gave a full confession, of course, but if not, consider yourself fucked.
Now, my experience with Korean courts pretty much consisted of looking at their work after-the-fact and hearing candid conversations from trial observers and other JAG’s, but they often seemed completely out of their league when they attempted to look beyond the confession and evaluate actual evidence. I’ve seen them convict on paper-thin evidence, and I remember then doing shit like this. My favorite example was the decision in the appeal by McCarthy, the guy convicted of killing the woman in Itaewon. They sustained the conviction after finding that there was sufficient proof of his intent to kill. In the very next paragraph, they reduced the sentence to just eight years because they didn’t think he really meant to kill her. When you can’t evaluate evidence, the temptation to base your decision on politics — whether pro- or anti-American — can be overpowering. And when the decision is based on politics, someone is sure to be outraged at the end of the day.
Ironically, at least according to GI Korea, the evidence against Basel was relatively strong, and it was the evidence against the other guy, PFC Feldman, that was weak. Not that any of us really knows any of this based on reading the papers’ accounts, which in my experience bear almost no resemblance to the actual evidence.
While I think both soldiers are pieces of shit and should be dishonorably discharged, this is not out of the norm for Korea were intoxicated behavior doesn’t seem to be condemned as much in Western culture. Had these been two Korean citizens, the results would have been the same or even less jail time so there shouldn’t be much outcry. I don’t agree with it, but that is the precedent already set. You can’t lay the hammer on two foreigners when there are hundreds of cases of Koreans getting off relatively lightly in similar instances. Sad but true.
BTW..I didn’t realize cigarettes and alcohol were forbidden substances.
What happens is this
1. Recruits apply no standards and fudge the books to get anyone in the door as there are incentives for having high numbers.
2. Drill sergeants, well, know of no incentives but as long as you don’t assault anyone while you are in training, they pass you.
3. After thousands of taxpayers money wasted on training absolute retards and shitbags, the 1st sergeants looks at their new soldiers and think “WTF?” and go through a lengthy and taxing ordeal of having the bad ones processed out. In the mean time, you get what we have here. Guys trying to rape a policewoman.
At least now the 1SG has what he needs to complete his paperwork (if they go back to their unit). The guys will be discharged. I hope with a dishonorable but recently everything seemed to be “less than honorable” oh well.
captbbq, The only legal way you can give someone a dishonorable or bad conduct discharge is to court-martial them.
The odds of a court-martial are virtually nil now. If you court-martial someone who has already been convicted in a Korean court, you have to show that the offense is a different one from one tried in the Korean court (not as a matter of UCMJ, but of military case law interpreting the SOFA). This can be difficult, because in my limited experience, Korean criminal charges don’t carry distinct elements the way the UCMJ does. In one such case, I actually had to get an affidavit from the Korean prosecutor clarifying what he was charged with.
Realistically, if these guys do any time in Chonan, an admin sep board is the worst thing they’re facing, and the worst possible discharge the regulations allow is an OTH. This carries most of the same adverse consequences as a BCD in civilian life. The big difference is that a court-martial conviction for rape requires you to register as a sex offender in almost any state. With just a foreign conviction and an OTH board result, I’m less confident that would be the case here.
Although the regs technically don’t permit it (it used to be at AR 635-200, Ch. 14-7), board members may be interested in knowing what evidentiary basis the Korean court had for each conviction. Occasionally, a board will retain a soldier in service if they think the Korean court got it wrong. I’ve seen it happen.
Assuming the papers have their facts right — which almost never happens — had these guys been charged in a court-martial, my speculation is that the PFC would have gotten acquitted of Art 120 (rape), convicted on lesser charges (violating curfew and USFK orders on drinking, etc.), and gotten a BCD and about 6 months. The panel would have hammered the SGT big time, in large part because he’s an NCO who should have been controlling those junior enlisted, not leading them on a drunken tear. I wouldn’t even venture a guess as to what a panel would do. New panels tend to go light; experienced panels are tougher. There are no sentencing guidelines in the military, but double-digit time in a federal pound me in the ass prison would definitely have been a possibility.
Some things to consider as to the whole question of where these guys should have been tried….
Every time some Engrish teacher or a member of the American empire occupational forces is up to some no good motherfuckerishness in Korea, SOMEHOW the blame falls on Koreans. WTF? You guys get together regularly to rehearse the same script while passing around the bong or something?
“…The guys will be discharged. I hope with a dishonorable but recently everything seemed to be “less than honorable” oh well.”
If I remember my military law correctly, a dishonorable discharge can only be imposed as a result of a US military general court martial. Double jeopardy precludes these men from being tried again for the same offense by a US military court.
The one convicted can be processed for an administrative discharge and this will happen. If I recall the administrative regulation correctly, an “other than honorable” is the “worst” category allowed — there is no such thing as an “administrative” “dishonorable” discharge.
The guy’s going to lose all his pay and benefits while he’s in Korean prison, and any veteran’s benefits after his admin discharge (which in this case I think will not be processed until he is released from Korean prison after completion of his incarceration).
I’m not sure what else you want to see happen to him. Did he get the crap beaten out of him by the Korean cops when he was arrested, like that GI a while back who went into the Korean police station trying to drunkenly stand up for his battle buddy? In this case I would say it was deserved; as a previous commenter said, he’s probably lucky to be alive.
Should be AR 635-200, you can check it out for yourself.
One more point. These guys should remain in Korean custody and probably won’t go back to the unit (which does happen after a court-martial if there’s no jail time).
If these guys had a history of drunkenness, curfew violation, and making trouble down-range, a well-run unit working closely with its JAG office could have chaptered them out in 30 days. Sending someone to a board to give them the OTH (other than honorable) is about as difficult as sending them to a court martial.
What I wish more commanders and NCO’s would do is (1) pull pass privileges from soldiers who abuse them, (2) chapter out soldiers who don’t obey orders and just give them their damn general discharge, (3) if the misconduct is too severe for an Article 15 and not quite court-martial material, consider a summary court martial, which can actually impose up to 6 months for junior enlisted. No, there’s no BCD, but it’s quick and easy, and by the time the soldier gets back from the Confinement Facility at Humphreys, the paperwork can be done and the soldier can be on his way home.
I don’t see anyone here defending the behavior of the soldiers. Are you actually telling us that this decision speaks favorably of the Korean judicial system?
Right. And that would be this occupational empire?
It sure didn’t take long for the accusations of poor recruiting to blame on these soldiers’ behavior which is especially funny coming from people accused of being “low quality foreign English teachers” by the Korean media.
Before people start blaming recruiting you might want to get your facts straight:
http://www.defenselink.mil/new.....thfact.pdf
I have also posted reaction to the verdict on my site. This verdict actually shows that the Korean court system is maturing and giving rulings almost similar to what a Korean would receive in their court system.
As Joshua pointed out I always find the netizen outrage humorous when if they were tried by military court martial they would be doing more time.
I missed the part about the two year suspension of sentence on Basel in my first read. The Korean court system definitely pulled that punch!
The SS article didn’t say if Basel will be processed for an admin OTH discharge immediately upon his return to USFK custody, but I assume so. Unless the Korean court specified that he had to remain in Korea for the two years of suspension? This probably isn’t practical if his enlistment expires during that period.
Has there ever been a case where a Korean court imposed a sentence involving incarceration but then allowed the US SM to serve it out in US military prison? Seems like that would have been a better alternative in this case, rather than just letting the guy completely off with a “suspension” (though I guess he did spend time in Korean jail while awaiting his trial).
In most cases, in Korea, such as this one, where a defendant settles with the victim- the sentence will be suspended.
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