June 5
JAPAN:
Cancer claims Death Row prisoner still pleading innocence
Hiromoto Haruyama, a Death Row inmate who spent more than a decade
fighting his conviction for the brutal rape, murder or injury inflicting
of three women, has died of Caner in Sapporo Prison, police said. He was
70.
Haruyama made a name for himself by continuing to plead his innocence
despite exhausting nearly all forms of legal recourse available to
him.<>P> Though the Supreme Court, Japan's highest court, had confirmed
Hareyama's death sentence, he filed a lawsuit in September 1992 claiming
he had been framed and demanding a retrial.
However, his demand was rejected in February 2001 and a formal objection
against the ruling was dismissed in March 2003, prompting Haruyama to
filed a protest with the Supreme Court.
Sapporo Prison officials said that Haruyama had been receiving an
intravenous drip when his pulse suddenly weakened dramatically and he died
at 7:43 a.m. Friday.
Supporters of Hareyama's legal battles said physicians found a cancerous
tumor in the prisoner in September 2003 so they moved the elderly death
row inmate from Sapporo Prison to the Hachioji Medical Prison.
Haruyama was moved back to Sapporo in April after his condition
stabilized.
(source: Mainichi Shimbun)
