Japan high court approves posthumous retrial of man over 1984 murder

A Japanese high court approved Monday a posthumous retrial for a man who was convicted of murdering a 69-year-old woman in 1984 in western Japan, upholding a lower court's decision.

In accepting the 2nd retrial plea, sought by the family of Hiromu Sakahara, who died of illness aged 75 while serving his term in 2011, the Osaka High Court said the new evidence presented in the latest plea is "clear" and "should (warrant) an acquittal."

"There is reason to doubt" the finalized ruling that convicted Sakahara of murder, the high court said.

If the posthumous retrial is successful, it will be the 1st major postwar criminal case brought by the family of a convict given a life or a death sentence to be successfully quashed.

In a decision finalized by the Supreme Court in 2000, Sakahara was found guilty and sentenced to life in prison on charges that he killed Hatsu Ikemoto, a liquor store manager in Hino, Shiga Prefecture, and stole her cash box.

Sakahara argued in the initial plea for a retrial that his original confession during the investigation was made under coercion, but it was dismissed by the Otsu District Court in 2006. Sakahara was appealing his sentence at the Osaka High Court when he died in 2011.

His family filed a second retrial petition in 2012 with the district court.

The Otsu District Court ordered a retrial in 2018 for Sakahara, questioning the credibility of his confession and noting its arbitrariness. Prosecutors immediately appealed the ruling.

The district court said it suspects Sakahara was forced to confess after being beaten by police officers and threatened by one of them, who said that the family into which his daughter married would come to harm.

The court also said the way Sakahara described the murder in his confession, through strangling the victim's neck with both hands from behind, did not match the wounds on the victim's body.

The family's defense team had claimed it was impossible to murder the woman in the way Sakahara had explained, and new evidence submitted a lab result by a forensic doctor showed the woman had been knocked down onto her back and strangled.

Source: The Mainichi, Staff, February 27, 2023

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