No to cancellation of suspension of execution of the sentence after the decision of retrial
Chieko Nakamura
Nobuo Nakamura
Kishiwada Chapter,
Kokumin Kyuenkai
Japan
May 14, 2013
On May 3, 2013, we received a letter from Mr. Park Tatsuhiro detained in Oita Prison.
In March 2012, Osaka District Tribunal decided to retry his case and the execution of his sentence was suspended. When he was about to leave the prison, the prosecution appealed and the decision to suspend the execution of his sentence was cancelled. The letter of Mr Park described the pain he has been suffering ever after for a year and two months by now.
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Mr. Park was arrested with a charge of arson-murder for insurance money that happened in June 1995, 50 days before his arrest. He was eventually sentenced, with Ms. Keiko Aoki who lived with him, to indefinite-term imprisonment. As there was no material evidence to sustain the charge, the judgment was mainly based on Mr. Park’s confession.
Mr. Park requested a new trial and Osaka District Tribunal accepted it in March 2012 on the ground of an experiment of arson the defense counsel made. The experiment pointed to the lack of reliability in Mr. Park’s confession. The prosecution immediately appealed and the tripartite consultation is now going on at Osaka High Court. The execution of the sentence was suspended with the decision of retrial, but the suspension decision was cancelled by Osaka High Court because of the appeal by the prosecution. The Supreme Court endorsed that High Court decision. It has been already 17 years and 8 months since Mr. Park was arrested.
He was charged of setting his house on fire that led to the death in bath of Ms. Keiko Aoki’s daughter. Due to harsh interrogation of the police, Mr. Park made a false confession. He said that he had showered the garage with 7 liters of gasoline he had taken out of a car, put fire with a turbo-lighter with the intention of killing the daughter who was taking a bath for insurance money. No physical evidence was presented to the court. During the Supreme Court examination, the defense counsel presented a new evidence to prove that it was not an arson but a fire caused by a leak of gasoline from the car that made the pilot burner of the bath explode. However, it was rejected as evidence and Mr Park was sentenced to indefinite-term imprisonment.
Osaka District Tribunal accepted the request for a retrial of Mr. Park, because an experiment made by the defense council with the presence of the prosecutor showed that the pilot burner of the bath caught fire before all the gasoline was sprayed. It evidenced that Mr. Park did not have time to use the turbo-lighter to provoke the fire as he had confessed to the police. (please refer to the attached documents for the details of trials).
I would like to read here some passage of Mr. Park’s letter.
“Since the suspension of the sentence was cancelled, my state of mind has not been as it used to be before. (…) I am trying to stay calm to be able to analyze the current situation objectively. I have to keep the balance of my mind, and for this I need more mental energy than before. I often think about the possibility that the cancellation of sentence suspension might lead to the cancellation of the decision of a retrial. (…) As I have once been an inch to release from prison and the decision was withdrawn, I am at a loss without knowing how to put my confused feelings in order. I feel like fatigue is settling and accumulating within me, as if I was receiving body blows.”
Reading this, we felt very sorry for Mr. Park. For us who are not inside the walls, a year passes very quickly. But to Mr. Park who is chained in prison, forced to routines every day, we can imagine how long a year may seem. It must be like a torture for him. The same could be said about Ms. Aoki who is now in Wakayama prison.
They are both imprisoned although they are not guilty. Although they obtained a court decision for retrial, they remain detained. Please help Mr. Park and Ms. Aoki to get retrial and be acquitted once for all.