National News

Toshikazu Sugaya, right, enters the Utsunomiya District Court to attend a hearing on Friday. (Mainichi)

UTSUNOMIYA -- Prosecutors requested that a man who had spent for over 17 years behind bars for murder he apparently never committed be acquitted, and apologized for falsely accusing him during the final hearing of his retrial on Friday.

"Evidence that has been examined clearly shows that he should be acquitted," a prosecutor told the Utsunomiya District Court. "We are indeed sorry about it."

The court will make a ruling on March 26, one likely to find 63-year-old Toshikazu Sugaya innocent of the murder of a 4-year-old girl in Ashikaga, Tochigi Prefecture, in 1990.

The focal points in the ruling are how far the court will probe into the case's investigation, the court's responsibility for falsely convicting Sugaya, and how it will respond to his demand that he be declared totally uninvolved in the murder.

Sugaya was arrested in late 1991 and later sentenced to life imprisonment. He was released in June last year after new DNA tests showed that he was not involved in the crime.

In the final oral proceedings on Friday, Sugaya's defense lawyer claimed that his confessions to the crime were not voluntary and were not admissible as evidence. The lawyer also argued that a previous DNA test conducted by the National Police Agency's National Research Institute of Police Science, which had identified Sugaya as the perpetrator, is unacceptable as evidence.

The defense counsel also pointed out that prosecutors who questioned Sugaya broke the law when they forced him to confess to the crime again following his indictment.

The lawyer then criticized the court for failing to notice the problem, and urged the presiding judge to express an apology to Sugaya on its behalf. Sugaya also urged the court to clarify why he was falsely convicted.

Prosecutors were less eloquent in their closing statement, which lasted around a minute and failed to mention the admissibility of his confessions nor the two new DNA tests that showed his DNA does not match that of the perpetrator.

"We caused Mr. Sugaya, who is not guilty, to spend 17 years in jail. What we've done cannot be irreparable. We are determined to prevent a recurrence."