[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----worldwide

[Rick Halperin]

March 20



JAPAN:

Death-row inmate loses retrial bid / Court rejects request over '76
Hokkaido bombing that killed 2, hurt 80


The Sapporo District Court on Monday turned down a retrial request by a
death-row inmate convicted over the 1976 bombing of the Hokkaido
government building in which 2 people were killed and more than 80 others
were injured.

In rejecting the request by Katsuhisa Omori, 57, for whom a capital
sentence was finalized in 1994, presiding Judge Yasushi Handa said even
after fully evaluating new evidence presented by the defense counsel and
taking into account old evidence it was impossible to question the
validity of the original verdict.

The defense counsel immediately announced they would lodge an appeal with
the Sapporo High Court.

A radical leftist activist, Omori was indicted on charges of violating the
Explosives Control Law, murder and attempted murder. Omori refused to
answer investigators' questions, but denied the charges during the
original district court hearing. "I was preparing to make a bomb," he said
at one point. "But I couldn't get hold of the weed killer you need for the
bomb. And anyway, I had an alibi at the time of the incident."

No primary evidence was discovered, Omori was found guilty by the
district, high and supreme courts based on eyewitness testimonies and
circumstantial evidence that linked him to the bomb used in the Hokkaido
government building. All courts handed down capital sentences.

In filing the first retrial request in July 2002, the defense counsel
argued that Hokkaido police had falsified their scientific report that
stated the main chemical in the herbicide, which could be used for making
a bomb, was found on a curtain discarded by Omori.

The defense counsel asked an associate professor of Hokkaido University to
reproduce an experimental analysis based on the testimony of a then
Hokkaido police officer, and submitted evidence arguing that it would be
impossible to complete the analysis within the time claimed by the officer
who conducted the police analysis.

Omori's lawyers also claimed there was no evidence to prove he possessed
herbicide and that this completely undermined the police case that Omori
manufactured the bomb. Following this assertion, Handa summoned a police
officer working at the Hokkaido police's crime science institute--an
unusual move in a hearing on a retrial request--as a witness.

The former officer delivered testimony that contradicted the evidence he
gave in the district and high court hearings, prompting the defense
counsel to insist that no scientific analysis had been undertaken by
police before Omori's arrest.

(source: Daily Yomiuri Shimbun)