MOMBASA, Kenya -- A high court Wednesday found a white American sailor innocent of murdering a Kenyan bar hostess, ending an eight-day trial marked by racial overtones and anti-American sentiment.
James William Tyson, of Riverdale, Md., burst into hearty laughter as Judge Zacharia Chesoni pronounced him not guilty of strangling Lucy Kabura.
'This is fine. I never did it,' shouted Tyson as Chesoni set him free.
Tyson, a fireman aboard the aircraft carrier USS America, had pleaded not guilty to the charge of strangling Miss Kabura April 5 in a $5-a-night rooming house near the Mombasa dockyard. Tyson had faced a possible death sentence.
'After carefully considering and analyzing the evidence produced by both the prosecution and defense as a whole, I find that the accused was never with the deceased at any time, anywhere in Mombasa on the night of April 5, 1983,' Chesoni said in his verdict.
The trial took on heavy racial overtones, with prosecution witnesses referring to the 21-year-old Tyson as 'the white man' throughout the eight-day trial.
Witnesses also spoke derisively about the behavior of 9,000 U.S. sailors on liberty along with Tyson while a nine-ship U.S. Navy task force visited Kenya on a six-day goodwill and re-supply mission.
In his defense, Tyson said on the night of the murder he had been gambling at a local casino with three other sailors and had then made love to a woman at the Oceanic Hotel in Mombasa.
Four prosecution witnesses were unable to identify Tyson as the man seen leaving the scene of the crime, and on Tuesday, two of three independent assessors, an Indian and a white, told the court they found Tyson not guilty.
The third assessor, a black man, said Tyson was guilty of manslaughter.
Assessors are called to sit beside a judge when the defendant is not Kenyan or is of a tribe different from the judge. Their opinions are non-binding.
Navy liason chief Carl Wheeling said he was happy with the verdict. 'All along we knew that Tyson never committed the offense charged,' Wheeling said.
The trial was front page news throughout Kenya and revived bitter memories of a 1980 murder case involving U.S. sailor Frank Joseph Sundstrom, of Coventry, R.I., who admitted killing a prostitute, Monica Njeri, during a lover's tiff.
Sundstrom pleaded guilty to a lesser charge of manslaughter and was fined $35 and released.
