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From Japan's Death Row To Freedom, Daniel H. Foote

Washington International Law Journal

In 1975, the Japanese Supreme Court relaxed the standards governing the grant of retrials in criminal cases. Since then four death row inmates have obtained new trials and ultimate vindication through acquittals. The facts of the four cases are compelling: all involved highly publicized murders, rather harsh investigations leading to confessions that the defendants subsequently disavowed, and seemingly routine convictions followed by decades-long struggles by the convicted men to forestall their executions and secure retrials. Each of the men spent over 25 years on death row before the final determination that he had been unjustly convicted. In this article, Professor …