Courts ignore reasonable doubt: lawyers

Lawyers involved in two famous murder cases say the courts have abandoned the basic legal principle that a person must be acquitted unless their guilt is proven beyond a reasonable doubt, with the result that some people are being wrongly convicted.

Masumi Hayashi KYODO PHOTOS

At a recent symposium in Tokyo, Yoshihiro Yasuda, a defense lawyer in the notorious curry poisonings in Wakayama Prefecture, and Yasuo Abe, on the team for the nurse who was found guilty for the murder of an elderly patient at a Sendai clinic and the attempted murders of several others, said their clients were not treated fairly.

Yasuda, a member of the defense team for Masumi Hayashi, who was convicted of killing four people with arsenic-laced curry at a summer festival in her neighborhood, reckoned the court found Hayashi guilty of mass murder on grounds that "she might have been the one who committed the crime."

Four people died in July 1998 after eating poisoned curry at a community festival in Wakayama Prefecture.

"Once Ms. Hayashi became a suspect, police worked to collect 'evidence' to support their suspicions, and the court handed down a guilty verdict" even though the evidence was only circumstantial, the Tokyo-based lawyer said. "The principle to prove guilt beyond reasonable doubt has been completely forgotten."

Yasuda, a leading opponent of the death penalty, joined Hayashi's defense when she appealed her death sentence to the Supreme Court. That appeal remains pending.

The Wakayama District Court found her guilty in 2002 on grounds that the arsenic found in the curry pot the four ate from was identical to the arsenic powder found at her home and other places she had been. It also determined that she was the only person who had the opportunity to poison the curry. She was also convicted of trying to separately fatally poison others, including her ex-pest exterminator husband, Kenji, for insurance.

Lawyer Yoshihiro Yasuda speaks at a recent symposium in Tokyo on the courts' treatment of the accused.

The Osaka High Court upheld the verdict last year, saying, "It has been proven to an extent that allows hardly any doubt" that she was the culprit.

Yasuda told the symposium that the arsenic analysis does not alone prove her guilt and criticized the lower courts for convicting her even though a motive could not be established. At the time of her arrest, however, it was reported that she had been criticized by neighbors for not participating more in the festival, and that revenge may have been a factor.

"If it was an indiscriminate mass murder against the community's residents, the question is why Ms. Hayashi committed it?" the defense lawyer said. "It may not have been murder, and I think the courts could have painted another picture of the incident."

After pleading not guilty at the district court, Hayashi exercised her constitutional right to remain silent. When she did speak to deny the charges at her appeals trial, the high court held her previous silence against her. The court said it was "impossible to think that the defendant, who until now has not spoken about the facts with sincerity, is suddenly starting to speak the truth."

Yasuda said the media circus before her arrest turned public opinion against her. People believed she was guilty and she was isolated by her community. "Given these circumstances, the defense team could not find anyone who would support her or provide evidence in her defense."

Sendai-based lawyer Yasuo Abe, another panelist at the symposium, shared his concern of possible judicial impropriety in the case of nurse Daisuke Mori. He has been sentenced to life for killing a patient and attempting to kill four others at a Sendai clinic with a muscle relaxant injected into their intravenous drips.

Abe told the forum the charges against him have not been proven beyond a reasonable doubt. Mori is appealing to the Supreme Court. The Sendai District Court convicted Mori in 2004, ruling he was the only one capable of committing the crime -- the same logic used against Hayashi.

The Sendai High Court upheld the ruling in March, saying, "It is unlikely that the muscle relaxant was mistakenly injected into intravenous drips five times at the same hospital in such a short time. . . . It is obvious that someone injected it on purpose."

"Mr. Mori was suspected because the death toll increased after he began working there in 1999, but the rise came about once the clinic started accepting more senile patients in order to improve its business," Abe claimed. It was reported after Mori's arrest that several elderly patients had died under mysterious circumstances, but he was not tried over those fatalities.

The defense team argued that the patients' conditions worsened due to illness and other factors, not because of muscle relaxant.

Abe said that despite Mori's claims of innocence, the newspapers reported the criticisms from victims and their families against Mori's lawyers, which turned public opinion against the defense.

The courts' position, coupled with biased media coverage, means defense lawyers are finding their jobs more difficult than ever before, he said.

"The criminal courts are now dead, or rather, they have been killed," Yasuda said.

Yasuda is not optimistic about the future of the legal system. He said the changes to speed up court procedures will stop lawyers from being able to properly defend their clients.

He was particularly concerned about allowing people victimized by crime to participate more in court proceedings.

"A court will be a place to condemn a defendant if victims are allowed to join. . . . The court will not be able to guarantee a defendant's rights anymore," he said. "We defense lawyers will be -- we already are -- in a hopeless situation."