Tag Archives: Fukawa Case

Exoneree Sugiyama Dies at 69

A sad news: Takao Sugiyama died on October 27. He was exonerated in 2011 from a robbery-murder case (Fukawa Case) in 1967.  For more on Fukawa Case, read here.

From The Japan Times:

Man Acquitted in Retrial of ’67 Fukawa Incident Robbery-Murder is Dead at 69

From Jiji: 

A man sentenced to life in a high-profile 1967 robbery-murder known as the Fukawa incident, and acquitted in a later retrial, died on Oct. 27 at the age of 69, lawyers who fought for him in the case revealed Sunday.

Takao Sugiyama had been hospitalized after his health deteriorated around summer, according to the lawyers. Continue reading

Why Do Innocent People Confess?

Why do innocent people confess to the crimes they did not commit? Here’s an article on the cause of false confessions in Japan by Mariko Oi (BBC).  Watch the story online here.

Related articles about the Japanese Criminal Justice System: False Confessions as Major Cause of Wrongful Convictions in JapanAudio and Visual Recording of Interrogations, Fukawa Case, and Compensation for the Wrongfully Convicted.

2 January 2013 Last updated at 00:29 GMT

Japan crime: Why do innocent people confess?

By Mariko Oi BBC World Service, Tokyo

Japan has a conviction rate of more than 99%. But in recent months there has been a public outcry over a number of wrongful arrests where innocent people confessed to crimes.

It started with a threat posted on the city of Yokohama’s website in late June: “I’ll attack a primary school and kill all the children before the summer.”

In the months that followed, there were a number of similar threats posted on the internet – some threatening famous people, including the Emperor’s grandchildren.

After a police investigation, four people were arrested. Two, including a 19-year-old student, confessed whilst in custody.

But on 9 October, the real perpetrator sent an email to a lawyer – Yoji Ochiai – and local media, explaining how he or she made those threats by taking control of innocent internet users’ computers with a virus.

His or her purpose, as stated in the email to Ochiai, was “to expose the police and prosecutors’ abomination”.

And in a way, it did. It raised the question – why did the innocent people confess to a crime that they didn’t commit? What kind of pressure were they put under? Continue reading

Another False Confession Case — Fukawa Case

Takao Sugiyama and Shoji Sakurai

As I posted here, false confessions account for many, if not the majority of, wrongful convictions in Japan. Yet another case illustrates this: the Fukawa Case, in which two people were finally exonerated in 2011 for a 1967 robbery-murder.

The crime occured in August of 1967, in the town of Fukawa, Ibaraki Prefecture, about 40 miles outside of Tokyo. A carpenter was found dead in his home.  His legs were tied with a towel and a shirt, a pair of underpants were stuffed in his mouth, and he was strangled. There were signs of struggle in the house, but it was unclear if anything was taken from the house, except for a white purse the victim supposedly used daily. 43 fingerprints were found but none of them connected to perpetrator(s). There was no physical evidence at the scene.

However, there were several eyewitness statements that two men (one tall man and another shorter man) were near the victim’s house on the evening that the victim was supposedly murdered. This statement lead the police to think there were two perpetrators.

Based on this information, the police investigated more than 180 men in the area, until they found the two men, Shoji Sakurai and Takao Sugiyama,who did not have an alibi on the date of the crime. In October of the same year, both of them were arrested on separate charges, and were interrogated.

Sakurai and Sugiyama were held in police jails (“Daiyo-Kangoku“), and interrogated for hours and days. After 5 days of interrogations, Sakurai confessed to the crime. Based on Sakurai’s confession, the police also forced Sugiyama to confess. They retracted their confession during the interrogation by the prosecutors, but the prosecutors sent them back to police jails, and after continuous interrogations that ensued, they finally gave in and confessed again.

The two contested their guilt at trial. The prosecutors had no direct evidence of their guilt. All they had were: their confessions made during interrogations by police and prosecutors (with the  testimony of interrogators and the partial tape recordings of the interrogations which recorded only the part after they confessed to the crime), and testimonies of eyewitnesses who saw two men on the day of the crime.

There was no physical evidence, including the white purse which was never found. Their confessions during investigation changed repeatedly, Sakurai and Sugiyama’s confessions contradicted each other’s in important parts, they did not match the circumstances of the crime scene, and there was no information revealed in the confessions which unknown to investigators.

Nevertheless the trial court declared that their confessions made during investigation were reliable and sentenced them to life in 1970. The High Court as well as the Supreme Court denied the appeal. Their sentences were finalized in 1978. Continue reading