The U.S. sailor is back from Japan but is now incarcerated in California on a foreign conviction that doesn’t conform to American standards of due process.
Japan helped mend a diplomatic sore before Christmas when Tokyo transferred an imprisoned U.S. Navy lieutenant back into American hands. But this international incident isn’t over, and the outcome matters to U.S. troops wondering if they’re vulnerable to rough justice while stationed abroad.
Lt. Ridge Alkonis was assigned to a Navy destroyer in Japan in 2021 when he fell unconscious while driving, and two Japanese nationals died after the attendant crash outside a restaurant. Lt. Alkonis maintains he experienced a medical emergency—acute mountain sickness—while driving his wife and children back from a daytime hike.
He was arrested and indicted on negligent driving charges. The father of three pleaded guilty, on the hope that cooperating and accepting responsibility would help him receive a suspended sentence. Few defendants are acquitted in Japan. But a Japanese judge sentenced him to three years in prison, which he began serving in summer 2022.
Lt. Alkonis’s family has since pressed for his release, and credit to President Biden and U.S. Ambassador Rahm Emanuel for spending political capital to get him back this month. But the lieutenant is now booked in a federal detention center in Los Angeles awaiting a review from the U.S. Parole Commission. The process could take months.
The Alkonis case is polarizing in Japan and even in some corners of the U.S. Navy. Some say Lt. Alkonis should have pulled his car over—according to the Navy trial observer records, he felt an odd weakness, a dim sense something was wrong, a few minutes from his destination. His detractors say he might still be in prison had the accident happened in the U.S.
The Japanese judge rejected the mountain sickness claim, and the Navy’s then-top officer said in 2022 that Lt. Alkonis “fell asleep” while driving. The U.S. press has dug up ostensible altitude sickness experts in Europe to cast doubt on Lt. Alkonis’s illness, no matter the dubiousness of opining on a car accident thousands of miles away.
