11 December 2023 :

Japan's top court on December 8, 2023 dismissed an appeal by the defense of a former policeman who was given the death sentence for the murders of his wife and two children in 2017, exhausting his legal options.
Five judges on the Supreme Court's Third Petty Bench unanimously upheld two lower court decisions that sentenced Mitsuru Nakata, 45, to death for the murders in Ogori, Fukuoka Prefecture. His defense had argued a third party could have been responsible.
Presiding Judge Yasumasa Nagamine said Nakata's disregard for human life was "extreme, based on his determined and strong intention to kill," adding that capital punishment is "unavoidable" as he has failed to reflect upon the crime and show remorse.
According to the previous rulings, Nakata, then a sergeant with the Fukuoka prefectural police, strangled his wife Yukiko, 38, son Ryosuke, 9, and daughter Miyu, 6, at their home sometime between the late hours of June 5, 2017, and the following morning.
"It is a logical assumption that the defendant killed his wife as his resentment (against her) erupted," the Fukuoka District Court said in 2019, rejecting the argument a third party may have committed the murders.
Regarding his two children, the district court said, "It is presumed that he lost his presence of mind after the death of his wife and killed them in the heat of the moment."
In 2021, the Fukuoka High Court denied an appeal, saying the lower court's decision to impose the death penalty was correct.

04 July 2023 :

The Japanese Supreme Court on July 3, 2023 upheld the death sentence for a man convicted over the deaths of three people, scrapping his appeal to finalize the ultimate penalty handed down to him in earlier district and high court rulings.
Takashi Uemura, 56, was convicted of murdering two men and illegally confining a third, resulting in his death.
According to the district and high court rulings, Uemura caused the death of a former yakuza, aged 57 at the time, by confining him in April 2010 in Hyogo Prefecture.
He was also found guilty of shooting and killing a 50-year-old former ad agency president in June that same year and strangling a 37-year-old man in the prefectural city of Himeji in February 2011.
Harune Nakamura, 52, who was indicted as the ringleader in the three cases, was found not guilty on one murder count in the district and high courts, and his life sentence was finalized by the Supreme Court in 2022.
Uemura's defense team criticized the ruling sentencing Uemura to death when he was in a subordinate position in the crime as "one-sided," but the top court's second petty bench presided over by Justice Akira Ojima rejected the defense's claim, saying that Uemura "played a core role among those who carried out the crime," adding, "It's truly grave that he took the lives of three people."
Justice Mamoru Miura, former superintendent prosecutor of the Osaka High Public Prosecutors Office, removed himself from the trial, and the remaining three justices of the second petty bench all supported the district and high courts' decisions.

05 June 2023 :

The Supreme Court on June 5, 2023 upheld a death sentence for a man convicted of murdering two other Japanese men in Manila in 2014 and 2015, rejecting his appeal to have the ruling overturned.
Toshihiko Iwama, 49, was sentenced to death by the Kofu District Court in 2017 for murdering the two men for insurance payments. The judgment was upheld by the Tokyo High Court in 2019.
According to the high court ruling, Iwama conspired with accomplices, including a man now serving a life sentence, to hire a hitman in the Philippines to kill 32-year-old Shinsuke Toba in 2014 and Tatsuya Nakamura, 42, in 2015.
Both men, fatally shot in Manila, were executives of a firm in which Iwama was a large shareholder, and their deaths would have resulted in large insurance payouts for the company.
The high court ruling upheld the district court's view that it was "highly likely to be a premeditated crime intended to ensure the victims were killed without the perpetrator doing it himself." The lower court also said his "responsibility is of a greater level" than others involved in the crime.

30 December 2023 :

Japan carried out no executions in 2023 for the first time in three years.
Currently, there are 106 people on death row in Japan. Three of the inmates died and three death sentences were finalized this year, according to the Justice Ministry.
The last execution was on July 26, 2022, when Tomohiro Kato was hanged. He was convicted of murdering seven people by driving into them or stabbing them in a random attack in Tokyo’s Akihabara district in 2008.
Yoshihisa Furukawa was justice minister at the time of the execution.
His three successors, including incumbent Ryuji Koizumi, who took office in September, have not signed any execution papers.
Under the Criminal Procedure Law, the justice minister is required, in principle, to order the execution within six months after a death sentence is finalized.
But the average incarceration period for death row inmates is about 15 years and two months, reflecting the time required to review finalized death sentences and respond to requests for retrials.

15 March 2023 :

The world’s longest-serving death row convict was on 13 March 2023 granted a retrial by a Japanese court in the latest twist in a legal saga dating back to the 1960s.
Iwao Hakamada, 87, spent nearly five decades waiting for the hangman’s call following his 1968 conviction for quadruple murder before new evidence led to his release seven years ago.
The Tokyo High Court ruled on 13 March that “Hakamada cannot possibly be identified as the culprit,” given the main evidence presented to finalize his death penalty was unreliable, Kiyomi Tsunagoe, a lawyer on his defense team, told CNN.
She added that the Tokyo court upheld the decision not to return Hakamada to prison, given that he would likely be found not guilty.
“Hakamada’s case is known globally, and there always remained the risk that he could be sent back to prison and face the death penalty again, despite evidence pointing to his innocence,” Tsunagoe said.
Japan’s criminal justice system has a 99.9% conviction rate and is heavily reliant on confessions. The country is the only major developed democracy outside the United States that imposes capital punishment.
In 1966, Hakamada was accused of robbery, arson and the murder of his boss, his boss’ wife and their two children. The family was found stabbed to death in their incinerated home in Shizuoka, central Japan.
The former professional boxer-turned-factory worker initially admitted to all charges before changing his plea at trial. He was sentenced to death in a 2-1 decision by judges, despite repeatedly alleging that police had fabricated evidence and forced him to confess by beating and threatening him. The one dissenting judge stepped down from the bar six months later, demoralized by his inability to stop the sentencing.
A pair of blood-spattered, black trousers and his confession were the evidence against Hakamada. The alleged motive ranged from a murder by request to theft.
But in 2004, a DNA test revealed that blood on the clothing matched neither Hakamada nor the victims’ blood type.
In 2014, the Shizuoka District Court ordered a retrial and freed Hakamada as he awaited his day in court, on the grounds of his age and fragile mental state. But four years later, the Tokyo High Court scrapped the request for a retrial, for reasons it would previously not confirm to CNN.
The decision to grant Hakamada a retrial on 13 March came after the Supreme Court in 2020 ordered the Tokyo High Court to reconsider its earlier decision not to reopen the case.
According to Tsunagoe, the court ruled on 13 March there was a strong possibility that investigators had planted five pieces of clothing allegedly worn by Hakamada during the 1966 murders in a miso paste tank where they were found.
Tsunagoe said the defense team has argued that the evidence used to finalize Hakamada’s death sentence was fabricated. On 13 March, the presiding judge supported the defense’s claims that the reddish color of the bloodstains on the clothing allegedly worn by Hakamada would have turned black when immersed in the miso tank over several months, Tsunagoe said.
Prosecutors will decide by 20 March whether to file an appeal against the retrial to the Supreme Court. If the defense can convince them not to, the retrial will be held at the Shizuoka District Court – where Hakamada was initially tried – although the timeline remains uncertain, Tsunagoe said.
“If prosecutors file a retrial after all these decades to the Supreme Court, it will display the extent to which Japanese justice is not functioning,” Tsunagoe said.

07 March 2023 :

A Japanese high court approved on 27 February 2023 a posthumous retrial for a man convicted of robbing and murdering a 69-year-old woman in 1984 in western Japan, upholding a lower court's decision.
If the reopening of the trial is finalized and Hiromu Sakahara, who died of illness aged 75 while serving his prison term in 2011, is acquitted, it will be the first major postwar criminal case brought by the family of a convict given a life or a death sentence to be successfully overturned.
In reaching the decision, the Osaka High Court said the case warrants an "acquittal," citing "clear new evidence" presented during the second retrial plea sought by Sakahara's family.
"There is reason to doubt" the finalized ruling that convicted Sakahara, the court said.
The latest development was welcomed by Sakahara's son Koji, 61, who has been working hard to clear his father's name together with his 85-year-old mother.
"We have been able to move a step closer toward an acquittal," he said while expressing hope to see a not-guilty verdict finalized quickly as his mother, who suffered a stroke, has become feeble.
Prosecutors, who have five days to file an appeal, said the high court's judgment was deplorable. "We will examine the decision carefully before deciding how to respond," they said.
In a decision finalized by the Supreme Court in 2000, Hiromu Sakahara was found guilty and sentenced to life in prison on charges of killing Hatsu Ikemoto, a liquor store manager in Hino, Shiga Prefecture, and stealing her cash box.
Sakahara argued in the initial plea for a retrial that his original confession during the investigation was made under coercion, but the Otsu District Court dismissed it 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 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 Osaka High Court questioned the Supreme Court's acceptance, as fact, that Sakahara knew precisely where to find the victim's body at the crime scene without being told, as well as the credibility of the photo negatives of Sakahara taken as he described the scene as part of an on-site investigation.
"There is room for doubt as to whether (the investigation) was conducted voluntarily, including the possibility that (Sakahara) may have been led by the investigators," the court said.
The high court additionally took issue with the Supreme Court's determination that Sakahara's alibi of drinking and sleeping at an acquaintance's house on the day of the incident was not true.
The Otsu District Court had said it suspects Sakahara's confession was made under duress after being beaten by police officers, one of whom threatened harm to the family his daughter married into.
The family's defense team had argued it was impossible to murder the woman in the way Sakahara was said to have described, backed by lab results by a forensic doctor that they submitted.