Biden under pressure to pardon Navy lieutenant imprisoned for negligent driving in Japan

President Joe Biden is facing a growing chorus of voices calling on him to pardon U.S. Navy lieutenant Ridge Alkonis, who faced negligent driving charges for a car crash that killed two Japanese nationals while stationed in Japan.

Alkonis, who was assigned as a weapons officer on board the USS Benfold at Yokosuka Naval Base, fell unconscious while driving back from a day trip to Mount Fuji with his wife and three children before crashing into cars parked outside of a restaurant, resulting in the deaths of two Japanese citizens.

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Alkonis did not have alcohol or drugs in his system, has compiled what the Navy described as a model service record, and has attributed the crash to sudden onset altitude sickness.

Japan, a close ally of the United States, eventually sentenced him to three years in prison in September of 2022 but transferred him back to the United States just before Christmas.

Alkonis remains incarcerated in California despite paying nearly $2 million in damages to the families of the deceased and pleas from his wife and lawmakers for the president to issue him a pardon or commute his sentence.

The Wall Street Journal, echoing the pleas of Alkonis’s family, published an op-ed on Dec. 29 calling on Biden to free Alkonis after he was excluded from the president’s crop of Dec. 22 commutations.

“The stakes are larger than Lt. Alkonis and his family. Congress in the latest defense bill tasked the Pentagon with reviewing foreign legal protections for U.S. service members, a provision driven by this case,” the Wall Street Journal editorial board wrote. “Bringing those arrangements up to constitutional standards might preclude another mess. A presidential dispensation for Lt. Alkonis would be a useful message to sailors and airmen abroad pondering whether they are living one lapse away from ruin.”

Rep. Michael Waltz (R-FL), a former U.S. Green Beret, has been a leading voice on Capitol Hill calling for Alkonis’s release, and he spoke to Fox News on Sunday.

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“This was a tragedy over in Japan, but it was an accident,” Waltz stated. “He was in Japanese prison, and yes, they are a wonderful and great ally, but he was denied legal counsel. He was denied an interpreter. He was held in solitary confinement. He was treated in the worst of ways.”

“The fact that he’s now being held in a U.S. prison because of a Japanese conviction on an accident and after how he was treated is unconscionable to me,” he continued. “I’m calling on President Biden. I am calling on the Department of Justice. Release him today. They have the authority to do so. Let this brave hero go home to his family and exercise the authority that you have.”