Japan Top Court Grants Retrial for Life-Sentenced Man after Death

Tokyo, Feb. 25 (Jiji Press)--Japan's Supreme Court upheld Tuesday lower court decisions to grant a retrial for a man who was given a life term over a 1984 murder-robbery in Shiga Prefecture, western Japan, and died in prison later.

The top court's Second Petty Bench rejected an appeal filed by prosecutors against a second retrial request from bereaved relatives of the man, Hiromu Sakahara.

Sakahara died of illness in March 2011 at age 75 while serving his sentence over the case, in which a woman in the Shiga town of Hino, who ran a liquor shop, was murdered and robbed of a safe.

This is believed to be the first time in postwar Japan that a retrial has been granted for a deceased person for whom a life term or more severe sentence was finalized.

All three justices of the Second Petty Bench agreed to grant a retrial. Justice Mamoru Miura, a former public prosecutor, did not participate in related deliberations.

[Copyright The Jiji Press, Ltd.]