Pneumonia kills death-row prisoner of 95

Press, 13 May 1987, Page 28

Pneumonia kills death-row prisoner of 95

NZPA-AP Tokyo Sadamichi Hirasawa, said to be the world’s longest-serving death row

prisoner, has died of pneumonia, a hospital official said. He was 95. . Sentenced to death in 1950 after post-war Japan’s most sensational trial, Hirasawa had been a prisoner since 1948 and had been on death row since 1955 for allegedly ;i killing 12 people during a bank robbery.

He died at a medical detention centre in Hachioji on the outskirts of Tokyo. He had been in a critical condition since two days after he celebrated his ninety-fifth birthday on February 18. At that time, he was quoted as saying: “I want to drink sake (rice wine) on the outside.” Several books have cast doubt on the evidence surrounding his conviction and none of Japan’s Justice Ministers, who must give formal approval for executions, agreed to give the order for Hirasawa to die. Lawyers and supporters filed 17 appeals, insisting that he was innocent and that his long wait on death row amounted to torture. Born in February, 1892, Hirasawa was a wellknown Japanese-style painter before his conviction for a robbery in January, 1948. In the robbery, a man posing as a health worker entered a branch of the

Teikoku (Imperial) Bank and told 16 employees that American Occupation forces had ordered them

to drink medicine because of an outbreak of dysen- .. tery. The clerks obeyed and, as., ; they, collapsed in agony, the man scooped up , - the equivalent of ?SUS6OO and .fled. J * „ : y Twelve clerks died, and the drink later was found to contain -potassium cyanide.

Hirasawa was arrested and signed a confession, but at his trial in 1948, he pleaded innocent, claiming the confession had been obtained under police coercion. However, he was convicted in 1950 and sentenced. to; death. The Supreme Court rejected his appeal of the sentence in 1955, but Hirasawa was never brought to the. • gallows. Japanese executions are by hanging. / In 1985, declassified documents discovered ■ in United States ? archives showed original investigators, had Concluded that the robber’s methods in 'poisoning the 16 were similar to procedures used by an Imperial Army experimental germ warfare unit in Manchuria during World War 11. Hirasawa’s supporters claimed he had no knowledge of poisons necessary to commit the crime, but the Court rejected the new evidence and again refused his appeal. <