Trial
At the trial, a Japanese witness for the prosecution asserted that Girard had yelled a warning to Sakai before firing, but Girard himself denied ever having done so, a statement which shocked and mystified observers. According to testimony from Victor Nickel, a soldier of the same rank who had accompanied him, Girard had lured Sakai and other scavengers toward his position by tossing empty casings out onto the range, then fired at Sakai "for a joke". Girard claimed that the death had been an accident. The presiding judge, Yuzo Kawachi, went so far as to visit the scene of the incident himself, and pronounced himself "baffled" by the discrepancies in Girard's account of events. However, he stated that he could find "no evidence of deliberate murder", and Girard was handed only a three-year suspended sentence. He was also demoted to private status by the U.S. Army as a result of his actions.
Read more about this topic: Girard Incident
Famous quotes containing the word trial:
“For he is not a mortal, as I am, that I might answer him, that we should come to trial together. There is no umpire between us, who might lay his hand on us both.”
—Bible: Hebrew, Job 9:32-33.
Job, about God.
“The trial by market everything must come to.”
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)
“Every political system is an accumulation of habits, customs, prejudices, and principles that have survived a long process of trial and error and of ceaseless response to changing circumstances. If the system works well on the whole, it is a lucky accident—the luckiest, indeed, that can befall a society.”
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