Overview
- On January 22, the former death-row inmate’s sister, age 96, submitted the 11th retrial petition to the Nagoya High Court.
- The defense filed seven new items of evidence, including expert analyses of bottle crowns and the sealing paper from a grape wine bottle.
- Specialists report that the sake bottle caps found at the scene were not opened by teeth, a finding the defense says undercuts shifting witness accounts about who opened which bottle.
- The filing also presents adhesive testing that detected two different glues on the wine bottle’s sealing paper, which the defense argues supports a post-sealing reapplication after pesticide mixing.
- The lawyers contend the confession is unreliable; the case previously saw an initial acquittal, a 1972 finalized death sentence, a 2005 retrial order later canceled, the inmate’s death in 2015, and a Supreme Court rejection in 2024, with the new petition now pending.