WASHINGTON: For US Navy lieutenant Ridge Alconis living in Japan, a springtime trip to Mount Fuji with his wife and three children was a form of fun and leisurely family time ahead of an expected deployment.
What happened next and why is a matter of dispute. But it led to a three-year prison sentence.
At the behest of Alconis’s family and supporters, the naval officer suddenly lost consciousness in the car, causing him to fall behind the wheel after suffering severe mountain sickness. Japanese prosecutors and the judge who sentenced him argue that he fell asleep during his sleepwalking, skipping his duty to immediately recuperate.
Never mind, Alconis’s car collided with parked cars and pedestrians in the parking lot, leading to the collision of an elderly woman and her son-in-law, both of whom were later killed. As a Japanese court prepares to hear the appeal of Alconis’s prison sentence on Wednesday, his parents are pleading for leniency for an act they say was nothing more than a horrific accident. But prosecutors see it as fatal negligence. It is pending for appeal in Japan.
“The word that comes to our mind is fairness. We want him to be treated fairly for an accident,” said Alconis’s father, Derek Alconis, of Dana Point, Calif. “We don’t feel like it. It’s been We know it is not so. And it worries us that our son has been sentenced to three years in prison for an accident.”
The families of the victims could not be contacted as their names have been modified in the court records reviewed by the AP.
The upcoming hearing is the latest development in the case against 34-year-old Alkonis, a specialist in underwater warfare and acoustic engineering who has spent nearly seven years in Japan as a civilian volunteer and naval officer.
In the spring of 2021, after a period of land-based assignments, the Southern California native was preparing for deployment as a department chief on the USS Benfold, a missile destroyer.
On May 29, 2021, with assignments, his family set out for a hiking and sightseeing trip to Mount Fuji.
They had climbed a section of the mountain and were back in the car, heading to the base of Mount Fuji for lunch and ice cream. Alconis was talking with his seven-year-old daughter when his family says he suddenly fainted behind the wheel. He was so out of it, he says, that neither the screams of his daughter’s wake nor the impact of the collision woke him up.
After the accident near Fujinomiya, he was arrested by Japanese authorities and held in solitary confinement in a police custody facility for 26 days, interrogated several times a day and not given medical treatment or evaluation. , according to a statement of facts provided by a spokesperson for the family. That statement said that when US officials arrived to detain Alconis and return him to a US base, he was already with the Japanese.
He pleaded guilty to a charge of reckless driving, which resulted in his death, and was sentenced last October to three years in prison. The charge carries a prison sentence of up to seven years in Japan. He has appealed.
English-language court records obtained by the AP show that the judge cast doubt on the mountain sickness claim, citing an initial statement from Alconis to police, which he said after driving through mountain curves He was falling asleep.
He later testified to suddenly feeling mountain sickness – a finding supported by a neurologist’s June 2021 diagnosis – but the judge said such sensations should perpetuate as Alconis tumbled down the mountain.
The judge said that although it was conceivable that Alconis was suffering from mild mountain sickness, it was difficult to imagine that he had suddenly become incapacitated with no sleep at all.
A Navy spokesman said Alconis remains on active duty and that the Navy has provided him and his family with “the full care and support that they need.” An attorney for Alconis declined to comment.
The case comes against the backdrop of long-standing concerns by Japan, poor treatment, though sporadic, by thousands of US service members in the country, and a feeling that they are given preferential treatment. A 2014 AP investigation found that at US military bases in Japan, most service members convicted of sex crimes in recent years did not go to prison, instead routinely decommissioning, fined or removed from the military to offenders. was punished.
This case is different, however, in that it does not accuse Alconis of any nefarious intent, and he and his family say he has taken repeated steps to express remorse and accept responsibility.
The family says they were encouraged by Alconis’s attorney to cooperate, plead guilty and pay compensation to the victims’ families—which they did by signing a $1.65 million settlement, about half of which would be in savings and Was raised from friends and family.
“Ridge has said this from day one, the first minute: He only wants to help this family. He feels the burden of what happened that day,” said his mother, Suzy Alconis. “We all do.”
Eric Feldman, a professor of Japanese law at the University of Pennsylvania, said the instinct is particularly understandable in Japan, where the criminal justice system values expressions of remorse and where payment to victims can sometimes deter criminal prosecution. It is a system that pays special attention to serving the interests of the victims.
“There is a general opinion that what you don’t want to do in Japan is to continue to declare your innocence,” Feldman said.
In this case, however, the criminal case has not gone away, and Suzy Alconis said it was disappointing that a display of remorse could actually work against her son in the courtroom. She feels concern for her son, unsure whether the case will have a lasting impact on her military career, but also pain for the victims.
“There are people who make really bad decisions and have compassion for those who make bad decisions,” she said. “We think we’d love a little pity because Ridge has spent her life trying to make good decisions. And then having an accident, it’s already hurt a family so badly — and it It’s hurting.”