Japan's 1st person freed from death row dies at 95

Dec 07, 2020 | News On Japan

Dec 07, 2020 (Japan Today) - Sakae Menda, the first person in Japan to have been released from death row after winning acquittal in a retrial, died Saturday of natural causes at a home for the elderly in Fukuoka Prefecture, southwestern Japan, his family said. He was 95.

Menda was freed in 1983 at age 57 after spending 34 years in prison. He spent much of the rest of his life as a campaigner against the death penalty, giving speeches in Japan and abroad.

Japan is one of only a few advanced nations to maintain the death penalty at a time when more than two-thirds of states around the world have abolished it by law or in practice.

In 1950, Menda was convicted in a robbery-murder case in his native Kumamoto Prefecture near Fukuoka and was given the death penalty by a district court branch.

Not only was he coerced into a confession by a team of investigators who interrogated him for hours on end, but in court key evidence supporting his alibi was ignored and false witness testimony was used to put him away.

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