Naha District Court on Friday sentenced a U.S. Navy sailor to 30 months in prison for a rape of a sleeping woman in a Naha hotel in March.

The sailor, 24-year-old Justin Castellanos was arrested on Mar. 13 after he took a woman whom he found sleeping in a hotel hallway to his room and raped her. Both had stayed in the same hotel but did not know each other before.

Prosecutors in the case had sought a four-year sentence for Castellanos, but the presiding judge Jiro Shiomi said that it could not be proven that sailor carried the woman into his room with an intention to rape her from the beginning.

According to the ruling, Castellanos took the woman, a tourist from Fukuoka in her 40s, who had fallen fast asleep in the hallway of a business hotel into his room in the small hours of March 13, and sexually assaulted her. Castellanos was arrested in the hotel shortly afterwards.

Castellanos reportedly first denied the charges but later under questioning admitted to the rape. He also told the court during the hearings that he accepts the charges.

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