Everything about Sadamichi Hirasawa totally explained
was a
Japanese
tempera painter. He was
sentenced to death and was convicted of mass poisoning, though he's suspected to have been
falsely charged and no justice minister signed his death warrant.
Teigin case
On
January 26,
1948 a man calling himself an epidemiologist arrived in a branch of the Teigin Bank at
Shiina, suburb of
Tokyo, before closing time. He explained that he was a public health official sent by US occupation authorities who had orders to
inoculate the staff against a sudden outbreak of
dysentery. He gave all sixteen people present a pill and a few drops of liquid. Those present drank the liquid he gave, which was a
cyanide solution. When all were incapacitated, the robber took all the money he could find, which amounted to 160,000 yen ($1392/£754/1000€). Ten of the victims died at the scene (one was a child of an employee) and two others died while hospitalized.
Arrest and trial
Hirosawa was caught by the
police due to the Japanese habit of exchanging
business cards with personal details. The poisoner also created two other incidents. The poisoner used a card which was marked "Jiro Yamaguchi" in one of the two incidents. Yamaguchi didn't exist. The poisoner also used a card which was marked "Shigeru Matsui" in another of the two incidents. Matsui told the police that he'd exchanged cards with 593 people, including Hirasawa. The police were led to Hirasawa through finding the money of unknown origin. He was identified as the poisoner by several witnesses.
He was arrested on August 21, 1948. He was also found to be in possession of sizable amount of cash, whose origin Hirosawa refused to divulge. After police investigation which included torture, Hirasawa confessed, but he recanted soon after. His later defense agaist confession was based on partial insanity. He had been troubled with
Korsakoff's syndrome, so he could say a made-up story. However, the court disagreed and Hirasawa was given the
death penalty in 1950. Until 1949, a confession had been a solid evidence under the law, even if the police tortured a person to extract a confession. The
Supreme Court of Japan upheld the death sentence in
1955. His attorneys tried to have the sentence revoked. Over the following years they submitted 18 pleas for retrial.
Doubt over guilty verdict
He was sentenced to death, but there was originally no conclusive evidence. In addition, although 40 employees saw the crimes, there were only two people who identified him as the criminal.
Seicho Matsumoto presumed that the true culprit was the
Unit 731 on his books;
A story of the Teikoku Bank Incident in 1959 and
The Black Fog of Japan in 1960. Matsumoto also suspected that "the money of unknown origin" came from selling pornographic drawing.
Kei Kumai protested Hirasawa's innocence by his film
The Long Death in 1964.
The successive
Ministers of Justice in Japan didn't sign his death warrant, so the death sentence was never carried out. Even
Isaji Tanaka, who agreed on
13 October 1967 to hang 23 prisoners, didn't sign the death warrant, stating that he doubted Hiwasawa was guilty.
The poison were regarded as
potassium cyanide in Hirasawa's trial, but it was suspected that the true poison may have been
acetone cyanohydrin which Hirasawa couldn't have obtained. It is regarded as one of the reasons to doubt his guilt because the victims' symptom were clearly different from potassium cyanide poisoning.
Death in jail
Hirasawa remained in prison as a condemned criminal for the 32 years. He spent his time painting and writing his autobiography .
In 1981, Makoto Endo became the leader of Hirasawa's lawyers. Besides the case, he took part in controversial trials such as
Norio Nagayama. The
statute of limitations for his death penalty ran out in 1985. The
death penalty has 30-year statute of limitations under the
Criminal Code of Japan. As of
2008, his lawyers have submitted new evidence to prove Hirasawa's innocence.
Further Information
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