Japan Panel Agrees on Need to Revise Retrial System

Tokyo, April 21 (Jiji Press)--A Japanese government advisory panel held its first meeting Monday to review the country's retrial system, following the acquittal of Iwao Hakamata after decades on death row.

Members of a subcommittee under the Legislative Council agreed on the need for law revisions and decided to hear opinions from former prosecutors and judges, as well as lawyers who have handled past cases of convicts acquitted in retrials.

The subcommittee has 14 members, including lawyer Hiroaki Murayama, who, as presiding judge in 2014, led Shizuoka District Court's decision to hold a retrial of Hakamata, 89, over the 1966 murder of a family in Shizuoka Prefecture, central Japan.

Public calls for a review of the retrial system, which has not been revised since the country's criminal procedure law was established in 1948, have been growing since Hakamata's acquittal last year.

Under the current law, the retrial process and the criteria and procedures for disclosing evidence held by investigative agencies are not clarified, leading to criticism of the retrial system as "the door that never opens."

[Copyright The Jiji Press, Ltd.]