{"id":8990,"date":"2011-05-25T12:42:26","date_gmt":"2011-05-25T03:42:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.debito.org\/?p=8990"},"modified":"2011-05-25T13:42:12","modified_gmt":"2011-05-25T04:42:12","slug":"kyodo-2-men-acquitted-in-retrial-after-serving-nearly-30-years-in-prison","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/?p=8990","title":{"rendered":"Kyodo: 2 men acquitted in retrial after serving nearly 30 years in prison"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Hi Blog.\u00a0 This is a bit of a tangent, but what affects citizens will also affect non-citizens as well (especially so, actually<\/a>), so here goes:<\/p>\n

The Mainichi reported yesterday that two men who were wrongfully committed of a crime were finally released.\u00a0 The problem is that it was a 44-year ordeal for them, thirty years of it spent in prison.\u00a0 And they are not the only examples of this lack of due process.\u00a0 As the article says, “The case has become the seventh in postwar Japan involving the acquittal in a retrial of defendants previously sentenced to death or life imprisonment<\/em>.”<\/p>\n

I’ve said before (after experiencing now six civil court cases that have all been riddled with absolute illogic) that the Japanese judiciary is pretty fucked up.\u00a0 So this is an example of how fucked up the Japanese criminal justice system is<\/a>.\u00a0 This deserves to be known about. So know about it.\u00a0 (You can also read about it in my novel IN APPROPRIATE<\/a><\/strong>.)<\/p>\n

NB:\u00a0 Before all you relativists start looking for examples of wrongful convictions in other countries that were later overturned, don’t even bother.\u00a0 For a) it doesn’t justify it happening here, and b) How much of this rigmarole and unaccountability will happen in other healthy judiciaries?\u00a0 Thirty years is a sizeable chunk of a person’s life lost!<\/p>\n

Is the Japanese justice system more concerned about looking like it never makes mistakes than about rectifying past ones and avoiding future ones?\u00a0 Arudou Debito<\/p>\n

\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/<\/p>\n

2 men acquitted in retrial after serving nearly 30 years in prison<\/strong>
\n Mainichi Daily News, May 24, 2011, Courtesy of CP<\/strong>
\nhttp:\/\/mdn.mainichi.jp\/mdnnews\/news\/20110524p2g00m0dm052000c.html<\/a><\/p>\n

TSUCHIURA (Kyodo) — A district court in a retrial Tuesday acquitted two men convicted in a 1967 murder-robbery case who each served nearly 30 years in prison.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The Tsuchiura branch of the Mito District Court delivered a not guilty verdict for Shoji Sakurai and Takao Sugiyama, both 64.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

They had been sentenced to life imprisonment in 1970 for the August 1967 robbery and murder of Shoten Tamamura, a 62-year-old carpenter, and were freed on parole in 1996.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The case was dubbed the Fukawa murder case, after the crime site in the town of Tone, Ibaraki Prefecture.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Presiding Judge Daisuke Kanda said in the decision that there was no objective evidence to link the defendants to the crime, noting that hairs and fingerprints detected at the crime scene did not match those of the defendants.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The judge also said witness accounts placing the two men at the victim’s home lacked credibility.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The two were arrested in October 1967, indicted in December that year and sentenced to imprisonment for life in October 1970 as suspects in the Fukawa murder case.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The case has become the seventh in postwar Japan involving the acquittal in a retrial of defendants previously sentenced to death or life imprisonment.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Sugiyama, who earlier in the day spoke to reporters at his home in Kawasaki, Kanagawa Prefecture, said he was unhappy with a mere not-guilty decision and hoped the court would look into prosecutors’ effort to conceal evidence that may have helped acquit the defendants.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Sakurai said a not-guilty decision was natural.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The three-judge panel at the court’s Tsuchiura branch held six rounds of hearings in the two men’s retrial starting in July 2010, when the two pleaded innocent.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

In the hearings, the defense counsel played a tape recording of investigators interrogating Sakurai and argued that the tape was found to have been edited. The defense contended that investigators apparently coerced Sakurai into confessing.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

A 78-year-old woman, who saw a man on the day of the crime at the crime scene, testified in a retrial hearing that the man was not Sugiyama.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

During the original trial, the two pleaded innocent to the charges, arguing that police investigators had forced them to confess.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

But the district court’s Tsuchiura branch, citing their confessions and witnesses’ accounts, found the two men guilty and sentenced them to life imprisonment in October 1970 — a decision upheld by the Tokyo High Court in 1973 and later by the Supreme Court in 1978.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

They were released on parole in November 1996.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The two first filed for a retrial in 1983 when serving in prison but were rejected. They again filed for a retrial in 2001 after being freed.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

In September 2005, the district court’s Tsuchiura branch accepted the two men’s second petition and decided to launch a retrial — a decision upheld by the Tokyo High Court in July 2008 and then by the top court in December 2009.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

In the retrial, prosecutors again sought life imprisonment for the pair, arguing that the defendants had confessed voluntarily and their depositions were credible, urging the court to find them guilty.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The prosecutors called for conducting a DNA test on four items of evidence including underwear found wrapped around the victim’s neck. But the court turned down the prosecutors’ request.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The court was initially scheduled to give its decision on March 16.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

But the court put off the date to Tuesday in the aftermath of the March 11 earthquake and tsunami that devastated northeastern Japan and parts of the Kanto region and crippled railways and other mass transit in the region.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

One of the two, Sakurai, worked as a volunteer at shelters in the quake-hit city of Ishinomaki, Miyagi Prefecture, after the March disaster.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Toshikazu Sugaya, also 64, who spent 17 years in prison after being sentenced to life imprisonment for allegedly killing a kindergartener in 1960 and was acquitted in a retrial in 2009, was among the audience at the courtroom Tuesday.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Sugaya told reporters he would work with Sugiyama and Sakurai to wipe out unjust convictions.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

(Mainichi Japan) May 24, 2011<\/strong><\/p>\n

ENDS<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This is a bit of a tangent, but what affects citizens will also affect non-citizens as well (especially so, actually), so here goes:<\/p>\n

The Mainichi reported yesterday that two men who were wrongfully committed of a crime were finally released. The problem is that it was a 44-year ordeal for them, thirty years of it spent in prison. And they are not the only examples of this lack of due process. As the article says, “The case has become the seventh in postwar Japan involving the acquittal in a retrial of defendants previously sentenced to death or life imprisonment.”<\/p>\n

I’ve said before (after experiencing now six civil court cases that have all been riddled with absolute illogic) that the Japanese judiciary is pretty fucked up. So this is an example of how fucked up the Japanese criminal justice system is. This deserves to be known about. So know about it. (You can also read about it in my novel IN APPROPRIATE.)<\/p>\n

NB: Before all you relativists start looking for examples of wrongful convictions in other countries that were later overturned, don’t even bother. For a) it doesn’t justify it happening here, and b) How much of this rigmarole and unaccountability will happen in other healthy judiciaries? Thirty years is a sizeable chunk of a person’s life lost! <\/p>\n

Is the Japanese justice system more concerned about looking like it never makes mistakes than about rectifying past ones and avoiding future ones?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54,5,37,10,31],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8990","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-pinprick-protests","category-human-rights","category-injustice","category-japanese-policeforeign-crime","category-tangents"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8990","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8990"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8990\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8990"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8990"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8990"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}