National Affairs: Suspended Sentence

Accused of killing Naka Sakai on a hilltop after luring her onto a rifle range with promises of spent brass cartridges (TIME, June 17), Army Specialist Third Class William S. Girard entered a Japanese courtroom one day last week to hear the verdict of his celebrated 86-day trial. Girard, intoned Chief Judge Yuzo Kawachi, was guilty.

Judge Kawachi spared no one in his summing up. He chided the band of Japanese shell-pickers scavenging the U.S. firing range for precious brass, implied that the U.S. military authorities at the range were almost criminally negligent, and said that Girard himself, “immature in his thinking, [had given way] to a childish whim . . . satisfying a momentary caprice.” The sentence: three years’ hard labor suspended (no jail time), and payment of witnesses’ expenses ($20).