5th Retrial Plea Filed for 1979 Murder in Osaki, Kagoshima Pref.

Kagoshima, Jan. 8 (Jiji Press)--Lawyers for a 98-year-old woman who served a prison term for the 1979 murder of a man in the town of Osaki in Kagoshima Prefecture, southwestern Japan, filed the fifth request for her retrial on Thursday.

The retrial plea for Ayako Haraguchi was filed with Kagoshima District Court. Lawyers also sought a retrial for Haraguchi’s late former husband, whose conviction has been finalized, the same day.

According to her conviction, Haraguchi colluded with accomplices including her former husband to strangle to death her drunken brother-in-law, then 42, with a towel on the night on Oct. 12, 1979. They dumped his body in compost in a cowshed early in the following day.

Haraguchi consistently claimed her innocence, starting from police investigations.

As new evidence, the lawyers submitted results of a medical assessment on the cause and time of the victim’s death. They argued that an analysis of the neck autopsy photos indicated the death may have been accidental, caused by breathing difficulties or hypothermia, rather than strangulation by a towel.

[Copyright The Jiji Press, Ltd.]