U.S. military courts have acquitted service members who killed civilians abroad

Evidence

When a Marine jet flying too low and too fast in Italy in 1998 severed a gondola cable, killing twenty skiers, many Italians were outraged when the pilot avoided Italian prosecution and then received a not guilty verdict in a North Carolina court-martial. Similarly, a U.S. military court once acquitted a sergeant who shot and killed a fifty-five-year-old Okinawan woman after he claimed he mistook her for a wild boar. And in the aftermath of the 1995 schoolgirl rape, Okinawans were incensed by provisions in the U.S.-Japan SOFA that allowed the military to deny the Japanese police access to the rape suspects until the issuance of a formal indictment. — David Vine, Base Nation_ How U.S. Military Bases…, 862

Categorization

• XREF: Supplies concrete case examples useful to the book’s argument about SOFA impunity draining local goodwill.