<\/p>\n
A U.S. Naval Academy midshipman has been sentenced to 25 years in prison for sexual assault and a range of related charges. <\/p>\n
Nixon Keago, a Kenyan-born student who played as a midfielder on the school's soccer team, was court-martialed last October. Prosecutors accused him of committing burglary, obstruction of justice, attempted sexual assault and sexual assault in connection with four separate attacks on three female midshipmen.<\/p>\n
According to prosecutor Lt. Cmdr. Paul LaPlante, Keago allegedly broke into a victim's room and assaulted her while she was asleep. He allegedly attacked two other female midshipmen during a Fleet Week cruise in New York. Prosecutors said that afterwards, he pressured a victim to lie about the circumstances of the case, leading to a charge of obstruction of justice. <\/p>\n
The last incident allegedly occurred after Keago knew that he was facing court-martial. Given the pattern, a government witness specializing in forensic recidivism testified that Keago had a high likelihood of committing repeat offenses. <\/p>\n
In July, the court-martial's seven-member panel convicted him of these charges, but sentencing was delayed when Keago developed symptoms of COVID-19. Proceedings resumed on August 14, and the court sentenced him to discharge from the military and 25 years in prison – less than the prosecution's request for 40 years and much less than the maximum, 120 years.<\/p>\n
Keago plans to appeal, according to the Capital Gazette. In addition, his family intends to file a civil suit against the U.S. Naval Academy regarding member selection and the racial composition of the panel.<\/p>\n
maritime-executive<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A U.S. Naval Academy midshipman has been sentenced to 25 years in prison for sexual assault and a range of related charges. Nixon Keago, a Kenyan-born student who played as a midfielder on the school's soccer team, was court-martialed last October. Prosecutors accused him of committing burglary, obstruction of justice, attempted sexual assault and sexual …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":15679,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[64],"tags":[4737,2524,1955,10188,10186,10189,2312,10185,10187,6731,10190,2523],"class_list":["post-15678","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-maritime-news","tag-academy","tag-assault","tag-covid-19","tag-fleet-week","tag-keago","tag-midshipman","tag-naval","tag-naval-academy","tag-paul-laplante","tag-sentenced","tag-sexual","tag-years"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15678","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15678"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15678\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/media\/15679"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15678"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15678"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15678"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}