Japan Press Weekly

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2016 August 10 - 16 [SOCIAL ISSUES]

Court denies validity of forced confessions in arson-murder case

In a retrial in the murder of a girl by her mother and mother’s de facto husband, the Osaka District Court on August 10 delivered a not-guilty verdict to the couple by acknowledging that their confessions are inadmissible evidence as they were obtained by force.

In 1995, Aoki Keiko and her de facto husband Boku Tatsuhiro were arrested on a charge of killing Aoki’s 11-year-old daughter by setting fire to their house in Higashiosaka City.

In the previous trials in this case, prosecutors submitted to courts no evidence other than the confessions by Aoki and Boku. However, the two were sentenced to life in prison and served prison time. Even in jail, Aoki and Boku insisted that they were forced to make confessions and demanded a retrial. After nearly two decades of struggle in October 2015, the Osaka High Court decided to reopen the case and granted Aoki and Boku a stay of execution.

The district court in its ruling denied the validity of the defendants’ confessions by stating that they confessed their crime because just after the arrest they began receiving excessive pressure to do so from investigation authorities.

Following the not-guilty ruling, the Japan Association for Social Justice and Human Rights (Kokumin Kyuenkai), which works to eliminate false accusations, issued a statement.

The statement welcomes the ruling by saying that the court sincerely responded to citizens’ call for not allowing a miscarriage of justice based on false charges by law enforcement authorities. In the statement, Kyuenkai expressed its determination to work hard to further increase public awareness of the need to eliminate such acts.

As the prosecutors office already gave up verifying the quilt of the two, the not-guilty verdict will soon be finalized.