Another False Investigation Appears

Kanazawa Branch of Nagoya High Court decided on October 23rd to grant retrial to a man who had been convicted of seven years in prison and served for it in a case of murder of a mid-school student girl in 1986. The court realized possibility that investigation authority had led the witnesses to false testimony for supporting the story about the case. It may make another example of fabricating crimes in the process of law enforcement. 

The girl was brutally subbed to death at her house in Fukui city in March 1986. The police arrested Shoji Maekawa through their investigation on the frequent inhalers of paint thinner in March 1987. Maekawa has been denying his commitment to the murder from the beginning of the investigation of police and public prosecutors.

 

While Fukui District Court sentenced innocent to Maekawa with lacking hard evidence of the murder by him in 1990, Kanazawa Branch of Nagoya High Court found guilty ordering seven years in prison in 1995, and the Supreme Court denied appeal of Maekawa in 1997. Maekawa served for it and left the prison in 2003.

 

Maekawa requested retrial in 2004 and Fukui District Court approved it 2011. But Nagoya High Court dismissed the decision of retrial in 2013 and the Supreme Court turned the appeal of Maekawa down in 2014. The process shows how starting retrial is difficult in judicial system in Japan. Maekawa requested retrial again with new evidences in 2022 and it was approved by Kanazawa Branch of Nagoya High Court in October 2024.

 

The reason for starting retrial was doubts on testimony of witnesses. The sentence of guilty had been based on the arguments of six acquaintances of Maekawa who saw him with blood on his clothes after the murder. One of those six was found that he/she had backed off a fact of not seeing Maekawa at the time. Another witness had told a memory that he/she was watching a TV program on the day he/she saw Maekawa. However, the day TV program was broadcast was not the day he/she saw Maekawa.

 

The court found that the witness who told about TV program had received a gift for marriage from a policeman in charge of the investigation. The court doubted that the police had been trying to achieve any preferable witness, because the investigation had been in a deadlock. It is possible that the guilty was sentenced based on false activities by the police.

 

The public prosecutors had acknowledged that contradiction on the date of TV program during the trial at Fukui District Court. However, the public prosecutors did not disclose the fact in the trial. “They had taken opportunity away from Maekawa to make right argument based on truths, by impudently continuing false argument,” Kanazawa Branch of Nagoya High Court accused the public prosecutors.

 

In the case of Iwao Hakamada, who was confirmed as innocent in a retrial earlier this month on a murder case in Shizuoka in 1966, the court found that the police and public prosecutors had fabricated evidences. Maekawa’s case can be another example of false investigation which imposed irreparable damage on a person. If the court decision was correct, it is law enforcement organizations that commits crimes.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Amendment of Local Autonomy Law

The House of Representatives started discussion on revision of the Local Autonomy Law, which would vest the national government a power to instruct local government in an emergency. It may change the relationship between the national and local government, which has been recognized as equal. The opposition parties oppose the amendment, arguing that it would give the national government an excessive power.   With the Meiji Restoration, the national government abolished the feudal system, introducing modern governance. However, its autonomy was not sufficient. The governor of each prefecture was appointed by the national government. The local governments subordinated to the national government. It was as late as 2000 when  the Comprehensive Decentralization Law  was enacted and the relationship between the national and local government was defined as equal.   The national government found inconvenience in the relationship between the national and local government, when COVID-19 was preval
Read more

Request for Final Nuclear Disposal Site

Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry requested Genkai Town, Saga, to accept “literature survey” for building a final disposal site for high-level radioactive waste. Genkai is going to answer within this month. If it accepts, it will be the third place to accept that survey, following two places in Hokkaido. Main reason to accept the survey is supposed to be subsidy from the national government.   Japan has no final disposal site. Among all 54 reactors in 17 nuclear power generation plant, 12 reactors of 6 plants are operating. The rest of them are not in operation, some of which are determined to be decommissioned. Used nuclear fuels are stocked in each plant, 　 or have sent to a reprocessing plant in Rokkasho, Aomori. There are two plans to stock nuclear wastes in the intermediate facility for disposal, one is already built and another is still in negotiation.   Nuclear Fuel Final Disposal Act in 2000 determines to bury nuclear waste in the underground. Literature survey, which is
Read more

Death Penalty Demanded on Criminal of Arson

On the historically brutal case of arson, the public prosecutors demanded an ultimate penalty to the offender. In the trial on the arson and murder in Kyoto Animation in 2019, the prosecutors requested death penalty on the defendant, Shinji Aoba. The lawyers of Aoba argued that the court should avoid sentencing death penalty. The judgement will be passed next January. Aoba was indicted as putting fire after pouring gasoline in the building of Kyoto Animation (Kyoani), a studio producing animation works, and killed 36 staffs and injured 32 on July 18 th , 2019. In the trial, Aoba argued that he could not tolerate Kyoani, because it had stolen his novel story in its works. Aoba later apologized to the victim’s families that he had done too much and regretted it.   In the closing argument in Kyoto Regional Court, the prosecutors demanded death penalty for Aoba, because the number of victims were extremely high in the history of criminal trials in Japan. “It is hard to describe about how t
Read more