The Seoul Central District Court on Friday sentenced Arthur Patterson to 20 years in prison for murdering a Korean college student in the toilet of a fast-food joint in Itaewon, Seoul in 1997.
Patterson is to appeal.
"I wish he'd been given the death penalty, but this is the maximum sentence he can get under the law so I have to accept it," the victim's mother, Lee Bok-soo (74), told reporters leaving the court. "I was afraid he would be found not guilty, and I'm grateful to everyone who helped us win the verdict."
Twenty years is the maximum term permitted for a juvenile offender, and Patterson was 17 at the time of the murder.
He was convicted of stabbing to death 22-year-old college student Cho Jung-pil in the bathroom of a Burger King franchise in Itaewon, a neighborhood popular with foreigners, because he had "looked at him funny."
The man he was with at the time, a Korean American named Edward Lee, was first convicted on Patterson's say-so but later acquitted for lack of evidence.
The victim's mother told reporters that she felt as if a load had been taken off of her shoulders but added that the sentence could be lifted on appeal.
She filed around 40 petitions with police to get Patterson to stand trial after he fled to the U.S. Patterson was finally extradited last September.
But the court also said the Korean American, who cannot be tried again because of double indemnity rules, was an accomplice. The judge said Lee egged Patterson on and did not try to stop him, and even told friends after the crime that they had stabbed somebody "for fun."
It said Lee acted as a lookout in front of the toilet while Patterson killed the student.
In passing the maximum sentence the court took into consideration the fact that Patterson never admitted the crime and tried to put all the blame on Lee.
