{"id":3014,"date":"2018-06-29T09:37:52","date_gmt":"2018-06-29T08:37:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.reading.ac.uk\/the-forum\/?p=3014"},"modified":"2023-04-24T12:41:10","modified_gmt":"2023-04-24T11:41:10","slug":"why-japan-is-reluctant-to-retry-the-worlds-longest-serving-death-row-inmate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/research.reading.ac.uk\/research-blog\/2018\/06\/29\/why-japan-is-reluctant-to-retry-the-worlds-longest-serving-death-row-inmate\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Japan is reluctant to retry the world\u2019s longest-serving death row inmate"},"content":{"rendered":"

Evidence against a death row inmate in Japan is shaky, but retrial is unlikely because it would damage the Japanese criminal justice system’s image of infallibility and\u00a0provide an opportunity for\u00a0abolitionists, says Dr Mai Sato in a new piece for The Conversation<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

In June 1966, the manager of a miso-producing factory, his wife and two children were murdered in their home. Their house was robbed and set alight. Iwao Hakamada, who was an employee at the miso factory, was tried for the quadruple murder and ultimately\u00a0found guilty<\/a>. But you don\u2019t need to be a legal expert to feel uneasy about the safety of his conviction.<\/p>\n

After he was arrested, Hakamada was interrogated without a lawyer and tortured for 20 days, for up to 16 hours a day. The prosecution\u00a0submitted 45 signed documents<\/a>\u00a0by Hakamada confessing his crime, but the court admitted only one.<\/p>\n

The police claimed that Hakamada was in his pyjamas when he committed the murder, and that the pyjamas were stained with blood that was not his, and with oil used in the arson. But then, 14 months after the crime and nine months after the trial had started,\u00a0five other items of heavily bloodstained clothing<\/a>\u00a0were mysteriously \u201cdiscovered\u201d in a miso barrel at the factory. (It has since been suggested in court appeals that the clothes might have been\u00a0planted by the police<\/a>).<\/p>\n

The prosecution duly altered its argument, and claimed that Hakamada wore the newly found clothes when murdering the family and then \u2013 for whatever reason \u2013 changed into pyjamas to commit the arson. However, the colour of the clothes was too light and the blood stains too dark for them to have been stewing in a miso barrel for 14 months. The clothes were also too small for Hakamada. The prosecution claimed that the clothes shrunk in the miso barrel, and that the tag \u201cB\u201d on the clothes indicated a medium size (which would have fit Hakamada), even though the tag in fact indicated the colour (black) not the size.<\/p>\n

Nonetheless, Hakamada was sentenced to death. More than five decades later, he is\u00a0listed in the Guinness Book of World Records<\/a>\u00a0as the longest-serving man on death row. But the possibility he\u2019ll end his life as a convict is not a sure thing.<\/p>\n

Shaky ground<\/strong><\/p>\n

In 2007, one of the original trial judges\u00a0admitted<\/a>\u00a0that even at the time, he considered Hakamada\u2019s conviction probably unsafe: \u201cLooking at the evidence, there was almost nothing but the confession, and that has been taken under intense interrogation.\u201d He said that two senior judges pressured him into writing a guilty verdict.<\/p>\n

In 2014, Hakamada was released and a retrial was ordered by a lower court \u2013 but in June 2018, the Tokyo High Court\u00a0overturned<\/a>\u00a0the decision to grant a retrial. It did not demand Hakamada be brought back into detention, given his age and health concerns; but until his name is cleared, he technically remains on death row. Hakamada\u2019s lawyers are now appealing to the Supreme Court. For the 82-year-old Hakamada to clear his name, the Supreme Court must grant him a new trial and find him not guilty. It took four years for the Tokyo High Court to issue its ruling, and the Supreme Court\u2019s decision could take another couple of years.<\/p>\n

The lead attorney in the Hakamada case, Katsuhiko Nishijima, is\u00a0convinced<\/a>\u00a0that the police and the prosecution \u201chid evidence\u201d and \u201cforged reports\u201d to get a conviction. After the Tokyo High Court\u2019s ruling, Hakamada\u2019s sister, who has campaigned for his innocence,\u00a0expressed her disappointment: \u201cIt\u2019s not just the prosecution, but the courts are also turning a blind eye to the truth.\u201d<\/p>\n

The court\u2019s exceptional 2014 decision to release Hakamada when a retrial was ordered and that he remains on release despite the latest judgment amount to a tacit admission that his conviction is less than sound.<\/p>\n

So why is the Japanese criminal justice system so reluctant to officially consider the possibility that Hakamada was wrongfully convicted? In short, because of the effect a not guilty verdict could have on the system itself. The Tokyo High Court\u2019s decision to scrap the retrial has to be taken in the context of other events that have nothing to do with this particular case.<\/p>\n

Clashing priorities<\/strong><\/p>\n

Earlier this year, I wrote about the\u00a0possible execution<\/a>\u00a0of 13 members of the now-defunct doomsday cult Aum Shinrikyo, sentenced to death for their part in the cult\u2019s infamous 1995 sarin attack on the Tokyo subway. The Japanese Ministry of Justice transferred these convicted cult members to various detention centres where executions can be carried out. It is rumoured that they could be simultaneously executed this summer.<\/p>\n

Had the Tokyo High Court upheld the decision to grant Hakamada a retrial, scrutiny of the death penalty\u2019s merits would have ramped up just as the Aum executions are due. The executions are already sensitive thanks to both the next Olympics and the\u00a0UN\u2019s 14th Congress on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice<\/a>. In the run up to these events, the Japanese government is working hard to keep attention away from any matters that would tarnish Japan\u2019s international reputation.<\/p>\n

This means the Hakamada\u2019s high court decision\u00a0relieves pressure<\/a>\u00a0on the courts as they try to \u201cfinish\u201d the Aum cases by the end of 2018. Until a retrial declares Hakamada\u2019s innocence, the Japanese government can work under the assumption that the current death penalty system is safe. But then again, that doesn\u2019t mean public opinion is set in stone.<\/p>\n

Changing times<\/strong><\/p>\n

My own research shows<\/a>\u00a0that as things stand, the Japanese public trust the courts. They view the handful of postwar death penalty verdicts that have been overturned as old to the point of irrelevance, with no bearing on the system\u2019s current workings. But if Hakamada were exonerated, that would damage the system\u2019s image of infallibility and provide an unprecedented opening for abolitionists both inside and outside of Japan.<\/p>\n

The same effect can be observed elsewhere. In the US, a number of\u00a0high-profile exonerations<\/a>\u00a0have played a part in\u00a0dramatically shifting<\/a>\u00a0attitudes towards capital punishment. According to polling firm\u00a0Gallup<\/a>, Americans\u2019 support for the death penalty reached 80% in 1994 but sank to 55% by 2017. Fewer death sentences are being handed down, and more and more states are moving away from capital punishment altogether. In the UK, the fallout from the wrongful execution of\u00a0Timothy Evans<\/a>\u00a0eventually led to the\u00a0Murder (Abolition of Death Penalty) Act 1965<\/a>\u00a0which abolished the death penalty for capital murder.<\/p>\n

For now, Japan is still trying to preserve the legitimacy of the death penalty and the criminal justice system by delaying an unedifying retrial while denying any possibility of error. But in the end, no system is immune to error. And so long as the death penalty remains a lawful punishment, innocent people will be sentenced to death. How we respond to mistakes is another matter.<\/p>\n

This post was first published on The Conversation<\/a>, 26 June 2018.<\/em>\u00a0Dr\u00a0Mai Sato is a Lecturer in the University of Reading School of Law. Her report,\u00a0‘The Public Opinion Myth: Why Japan retains the Death Penalty’, and ‘The Wavering Public?’, a documentary she commissioned, have gone a long way to changing Japan\u2019s received notions of the legitimacy of the death penalty. In 2017 she won a University of Reading\u00a0<\/em>Research\u00a0Engagement and Impact Award\u00a0<\/em>for her research.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Evidence against a death row inmate in Japan is shaky, but retrial is unlikely because it would damage the Japanese criminal justice system’s image of infallibility and\u00a0provide an opportunity for\u00a0abolitionists,…Read More ><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":127,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"__cvm_playback_settings":[],"__cvm_video_id":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[40,216,230,502,527],"class_list":["post-3014","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-prosperity-resilience","tag-abolitionists","tag-criminal-justice","tag-death-penalty","tag-japan","tag-law-2"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nWhy Japan is reluctant to retry the world\u2019s longest-serving death row inmate - 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