Gay Issue Raised at Marine’s Murder Trial
The lawyer for an 18-year-old Marine on trial in the killing of a Japanese man said Tuesday that the American snapped in a drunken rage at what he believed to be homosexual advances.
In the opening session of his trial, Pfc. Christopher A. Glidden of New Castle, Pa., admitted striking Seiyu Yokota on the head once with a flower pot and three times with a block of concrete outside a bar near his base on the southern island of Okinawa.
But Glidden denied prosecution charges that he intended to kill the 33-year-old carpenter, said Minoru Uechi, Glidden’s lawyer.
The case has been cited by some gay rights groups in the United States as an example of a widespread hatred of homosexuals in the military.
Yokota’s killing on April 11 touched off street protests on Okinawa, where about 20,000 Marines are based. Yokota would be the fifth Okinawan determined to have been killed by U.S. military personnel in 20 years.
Prosecutors did not specify what sentence they would demand, Uechi said.
The trial is being heard by a panel of three judges. The next session is scheduled for Sept. 14.
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