PUBLISHER'S NOTE: The Hiromu Sakahara case in Japan, like the Tim Rees case in Ontario, is a classical example of police dirty tricks which can send an innocent person to prison for life, and even, in some jurisdictions to Death Row. Tim Rees was convicted of second degree murder in the death of 10-year-old Darla Thurrott in Toronto, Ontario, in 1989 and sentenced to life imprisonment with no opportunity to seek parole for 15 years. He was however exonerated when the Ontario Court of Appeal quashed the conviction on November 27, 2025 and ordered a new trial. On December 29th the prosecution withdrew the murder charge but by this time Tim Rees had spent 23 years behind bars as a child-killer, and many years thereafter on parole. As the Toronto Star reported in its story on the withdrawal of the charges: "In court, Superior Court Justice Jane Kelly said Rees shouldn’t have spent one day in prison. The fact that the recording was not disclosed and was found in a box of tapes stored in the police chief’s office raises more questions than answers, Kelly noted. “That is for somebody else to decide what the result of that is.” Hiromu Sakahara died in 2011 while serving a life sentence for murdering a store manager in the rural town of Hino in 1984. Both cases involve police use of cases of two nefarious techniques - a lethal combination which would horrify conscientious police officer, and make anyone else cringe as well. The first: Coercion or fabrication of a confession. The second: Concealing of critical evidence from the defence, which makes it impossible for the accused person to establish that he or she is innocent. It's hard to imagine any greater misconduct by the police because of the harm caused to the the individuals, to their families and to society (where the perpetrator of the crime will remain free to committing other terrible crimes.) The two cases have something else in common: Since the concealed negative's in the Sakahara cases- and the incriminating third party videotaped statement of the probable killer in Tim Rees's case were revealed years after the trial and after all appeals had been exhausted, much of the damage has already been done. I originally planned to devote this post to the recent decision to order a rare post-humous retrial for Hiromu Sakahara, which I gather would not have been ordered unless the government intended to posthumously exonerate him, as his family has fought for incessantly. However, the more I learned about his case, and his families valiant battle to secure a post-humous exoneration for him, the more I realized that there were some truly troubling parallels with the Tim Rees case, which also involved the hiding of critical evidence by the police. So before getting into the post, I am setting out these parallels, in order to focus public attention on the harsh injustice imposed on Tim Rees by Ontario's criminal justice system, in order to identify those responsible for hiding the critical evidence (It was found in a box in the office of the chief of police), and also in order to determine if prosecutors played any role in concealing it. How else can we have confidence in our criminal justice system? So, let the truth be out! Let justice be done for Tim Rees: And let there be accountability for those that deserve it. As noted above, withdrawing the charges, Justice Kelly said the fact that the recording was not disclosed and was found in a box of tapes stored in the police chief’s office raises more questions than answers - and that that is for somebody else to decide what the result of that is.” So much time has gone by already. That can't happen soon enough.
Harold Levy: Publisher: The Charles Smith Blog;
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HIROMU SAKAHARA: COERCED CONFESSION:
Japan Times: "Sakahara was initially called in by police for questioning because he was a frequent customer to the store. However, he was released shortly after his wife was able to prove that he was drinking somewhere else on the night, according to Koji. Sakahara later told his son he’d been beaten and kicked and only buckled after officers began to direct the threats at people around him, said Koji, who had confronted his father about his confession. The next day, police took Sakahara away. “He never came home again,” Koji recalled."
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TIM REES: FABRICATED CONFESSION:
Lawyer James Lockyer (Innocence Canada) interviewed by CBC Radio As It Happens: “He confessed, they say. In fact, what they did was they wrote down their version of what they think might have happened if he had done it, and just had him say yes. And so it was really their words, and then they just said, ‘Sign here.’ And they caught him at a time that he was very depressed... He was in a wretched state at the time, and just wanted to get out of the room and go to sleep somewhere. So he was ready to do whatever if they asked him.”
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HIROMU SAKAHARA: HIDDEN NEGATIVE FILM:
"Editorial: The Japan News: February 2026: (The editorial is headed, "First Posthumous retrial; Lost time can never be recovered:) "A photograph in the investigative files showing Sakahara purportedly leading investigators to the site where the body was dumped served as the decisive evidence that led to his conviction. However, items inconsistent with the photo later came to light. Negative film disclosed by prosecutors revealed images suggesting that police officers had actually been guiding Sakahara’s movements. The existence of these negatives was only confirmed more than a decade after the initial petition for a retrial — after Sakahara had died. Why was such crucial evidence withheld for so many years? In other cases of wrongful conviction, a recurring pattern has emerged such as the coercion of confessions to fit an investigative narrative and the selective collection of evidence. It is inevitable to conclude that investigative authorities at the time prioritized arrests and convictions of suspects — even through forced measures — over uncovering the actual truth."
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TIM REES: THE HIDDEN TAPE-RECORDED STATEMENT OF THE LANDLORD:
"In its release on the pushing of the charge, Innocence Canada reports that in 2018 filed an application alleging that he had been wrongly convicted with the then Minister of Justice, Jody Wilson-Raybould - and that, "The compelling feature of his application was an undisclosed tape-recorded statement of the landlord who lived in the same home and slept in the room immediately across the hall from Darla. The landlord, since deceased, had given a highly incriminating statement to the police hours after the murder but the defence knew nothing of it. The landlord was able to testify with impunity, and falsely. that he had never had a relationship with Darla and had not been in her bedroom on the night she was murdered. " Knowing what we know now, this is enough to make one weep. All the time that the prosecutor was trying to put him away for life through this witness, for a crime he did not commit, somewhere nearby, in the possession of the police, was a tape on which the probable killer, standing just a few feet away, was implicating himself in the crime.. As the Innocence Canada released continued: "If the missing tape recording had been disclosed in 1989, it is questionable whether Mr. Rees would ever have been charged, let alone convicted of Darla’s murder. In a remarkable twist, in 1989 it was one or more members of the Toronto Service who never revealed the existence of the missing tape-recording, and in 2016 it was members of the Toronto Police Homicide Cold Squad who found the missing tape-recording after they had been assigned to respond to Innocence Canada’s request for access to the original investigative file."
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THE POST:
BACKGROUND: From Japan News (Yomiuri Shimbum): February 28, 2026. (Editorial under the heading 'First posthumous retrial: Lost time can never be recovered.: Link Below: "Sakahara was arrested three years after the incident based on a confession he made. Although he pleaded not guilty at trial, arguing that his confession had been coerced, he was found guilty at the district, high and supreme court level. "A photograph in the investigative files showing Sakahara purportedly leading investigators to the site where the body was dumped served as the decisive evidence that led to his conviction. However, items inconsistent with the photo later came to light. Negative film disclosed by prosecutors revealed images suggesting that police officers had actually been guiding Sakahara’s movements. The existence of these negatives was only confirmed more than a decade after the initial petition for a retrial — after Sakahara had died. Why was such crucial evidence withheld for so many years? In other cases of wrongful conviction, a recurring pattern has emerged such as the coercion of confessions to fit an investigative narrative and the selective collection of evidence. It is inevitable to conclude that investigative authorities at the time prioritized arrests and convictions of suspects — even through forced measures — over uncovering the actual truth."
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PASSAGE OF THE DAY: "Sakahara argued his innocence during his trial but was convicted based on police claims that he was able to lead them to the location of the body, and separately the site of the safe that was stolen from the liquor store. Throughout the 24 years Sakahara was locked up, his son and other family members would visit him and tell him to hang on, as they fought to get his case reheard. “You can’t give up in a place like this,” they would tell him. But his father contracted pneumonia in 2011, and after two decades in prison, his body was too weak to fight it. Sakahara passed away that year. “You don’t have to fight anymore. It’s okay to let go. You’ve worked so hard until now,” his sister told their father moments before his heart stopped beating, Koji recalled."
PASSAGE TWO OF THE DAY: "All these years, the stigma stuck no matter how hard the family fought to change the narrative. “People viewed us as a family of a criminal,” said Koji, adding that his mother used to get harassing calls, heckling “murderer.” The family won a retrial based on negative film stored within evidence files that their lawyer argued shows that police may have guided Sakahara to the location of the body. Sakahara is believed to be only the second person granted a posthumous trial in post-war Japan."
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PASSAGE TWO OF THE DAY: "All these years, the stigma stuck no matter how hard the family fought to change the narrative. “People viewed us as a family of a criminal,” said Koji, adding that his mother used to get harassing calls, heckling “murderer.” The family won a retrial based on negative film stored within evidence files that their lawyer argued shows that police may have guided Sakahara to the location of the body. Sakahara is believed to be only the second person granted a posthumous trial in post-war Japan."
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PASSAGE THREE OF THE DAY: "Sakahara is believed to be only the second person granted a posthumous trial in post-war Japan. The first was in 1985, when six years after her death, Shigeko Fuji was acquitted of killing her husband. She spent 27 years in prison for the crime that evidence ultimately suggested was committed by an intruder. Two years ago, another man, Iwao Hakamata, was acquitted after spending more than 46 years on death row for a murder his lawyer said he was forced to admit."
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Sakahara later told his son he’d been beaten and kicked and only buckled after officers began to direct the threats at people around him, said Koji, who had confronted his father about his confession.
The next day, police took Sakahara away. “He never came home again,” Koji recalled. Sakahara argued his innocence during his trial but was convicted based on police claims that he was able to lead them to the location of the body, and separately the site of the safe that was stolen from the liquor store.
Throughout the 24 years Sakahara was locked up, his son and other family members would visit him and tell him to hang on, as they fought to get his case reheard. “You can’t give up in a place like this,” they would tell him.
But his father contracted pneumonia in 2011, and after two decades in prison, his body was too weak to fight it.
Sakahara passed away that year. “You don’t have to fight anymore. It’s okay to let go. You’ve worked so hard until now,” his sister told their father moments before his heart stopped beating, Koji recalled.
All these years, the stigma stuck no matter how hard the family fought to change the narrative. “People viewed us as a family of a criminal,” said Koji, adding that his mother used to get harassing calls, heckling “murderer.”
The family won a retrial based on negative film stored within evidence files that their lawyer argued shows that police may have guided Sakahara to the location of the body.
Sakahara is believed to be only the second person granted a posthumous trial in post-war Japan.
The first was in 1985, when six years after her death, Shigeko Fuji was acquitted of killing her husband. She spent 27 years in prison for the crime that evidence ultimately suggested was committed by an intruder.
Two years ago, another man, Iwao Hakamata, was acquitted after spending more than 46 years on death row for a murder his lawyer said he was forced to admit.
Overdue reforms
Part of the problem in Japan is the lack of legal representation for those brought in for questioning over an alleged crime.
Japan hasn’t made access to lawyers during interrogations an absolute right despite being a member of The Group of Seven (G7) – an intergovernmental forum of the US and other Western allies that often emphasizes the importance of human rights and the rule of law. These failures have long drawn criticism from the United Nations Human Rights Committee.
Japan’s legal system has also been criticized for handing prosecutors too much power. Under the proposed change, they’ll only be able to appeal a retrial decision if there are “sufficient grounds.”
The country’s Justice Ministry had opposed the changes, claiming that limiting the scope for appeals could “undermine the institutional safeguards that ensure careful and fair judicial decisions.”
There is also “a significant risk that this would fundamentally alter the nature of interrogations – which play a crucial role in evidence gathering – and substantially undermine their effectiveness,” the spokesperson added.
Some criminal law experts, however, said the reform has been long overdue.
Law professor Tomonobu Ishida, at Meiji University in Tokyo, said delays for wrongly convicted individuals to seek justice are “one of the most serious problems in Japan’s criminal justice system.”
“In some retrial cases, it has taken decades before wrongful convictions were corrected. During that time, defendants and their families often suffer irreparable physical, psychological, and social harm,” he said.
Professor Koji Tabuchi, who specializes criminal law in Kyushu University in Fukuoka, said it’s time for prosecutors to forgo a zero-sum mindset when an individual’s liberty is on the line.
“When judges declare a defendant not guilty in Japan, prosecutors think: ‘We lost’,” he said. “But do they have to think so?”
Those waiting for justice in jail also aren’t getting any younger, said another expert in Japanese criminal law.
“Many of the defendants for petitioning for the retrial, they’re very old and they actually have no time left,” said Kana Sasakura, law professor at Konan University in the western city of Kobe.
Sakahara’s lawyer Ryota Ishigawa, who had been fighting his case for 20 years, says the decision to grant a retrial came too late.
“As the defense team, we are deeply disappointed. There is fundamental injustice in the system as a whole. We’re frustrated that we couldn’t celebrate with the defendant,” he said.
For Koji, change can’t come soon enough — the years of fighting for justice for his father have burdened him with guilt and regret.
“If the retrial had been granted while he was alive, he would still be here,” he said, of his father.
“I sincerely hope that Japan will, as soon as possible, bring its legal system in line with other countries, so that no more victims of wrongful convictions have to suffer.”"
STORY: "A man was jailed for murder. 15 years after his death, he will get a retrial," by Reporters Yumi Asada and Chris Lay, published by CNN, on June 12, 2026. (Yumi Asada is a CNN Field Producer based in Tokyo...Chris Lay is a news Reporter CNN National Desk.)
STORY: "A man was jailed for murder. 15 years after his death, he will get a retrial," by Reporters Yumi Asada and Chris Lay, published by CNN, on June 12, 2026.
GIST: When a Japanese court granted Hiromu Sakahara a retrial, there was no defendant in the dock celebrating the prospect of freedom.
Instead, family members gathered around his grave to share news that he had longed to hear in life after a decades-long fight for justice.
Sakahara died in 2011 while serving a life sentence for murdering a store manager in the rural town of Hino in 1984 – based on a confession that he said was forced.
A rare posthumous retrial is expected to begin soon, but the long delays in Sakahara’s case added momentum to calls for reform to speed up the excruciatingly long process people must go through to seek redress in Japan.
“I regret that we could not save my father from prison,” his son Koji Sakahara told CNN.
“While I am happy about the decision to grant a retrial, it’s still incredibly painful,” said Koji, now 64 with hair that’s turned grey during the long campaign to prove his father’s innocence.
Japan has a reputation for “hostage justice,” a term used to describe the detention of suspects for questioning, often without access to legal counsel, for far longer than the law allows in other countries.
With a conviction rate of over 99%, human rights groups say innocent people are being jailed for crimes they didn’t commit.
Sakahara first filed for a retrial in 2001. Even after his death a decade later, his family kept pushing for a new hearing, which was repeatedly challenged by prosecutors in all three levels of court.
Sakahara’s long wait for justice inspired a new bill that, if passed, could make it harder for prosecutors to appeal decisions granting a retrial.
Officials within Japan’s Justice Department argue that the proposed changes could undermine the finality of convictions.
However, Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi – a right-winger who counts Britain’s Margaret Thatcher among her political idols – has backed the legislation, telling parliament last month that it’s vital to ensuring the retrial system delivers prompt justice.
“It is unacceptable for innocent people to be punished,” she said. “If a final judgment convicts an innocent person, that person must be promptly exonerated.”
A quiet life upended
Koji Sakahara says in the early 80s his family was living an ordinary life in Hino, a quiet town about an hour’s drive east of Kyoto.
“Everyone in our family was working; we had no financial struggles, and I believe we were having a happy life with our father, who was very devoted to his children,” he said.
But their world turned upside down in December 1984 after the disappearance of a local liquor store manager in a suspected murder-robbery. Her body was found a month later in a field.
Sakahara was initially called in by police for questioning because he was a frequent customer to the store. However, he was released shortly after his wife was able to prove that he was drinking somewhere else on the night, according to Koji.
STORY: "A man was jailed for murder. 15 years after his death, he will get a retrial," by Reporters Yumi Asada and Chris Lay, published by CNN, on June 12, 2026.
GIST: When a Japanese court granted Hiromu Sakahara a retrial, there was no defendant in the dock celebrating the prospect of freedom.
Instead, family members gathered around his grave to share news that he had longed to hear in life after a decades-long fight for justice.
Sakahara died in 2011 while serving a life sentence for murdering a store manager in the rural town of Hino in 1984 – based on a confession that he said was forced.
A rare posthumous retrial is expected to begin soon, but the long delays in Sakahara’s case added momentum to calls for reform to speed up the excruciatingly long process people must go through to seek redress in Japan.
“I regret that we could not save my father from prison,” his son Koji Sakahara told CNN.
“While I am happy about the decision to grant a retrial, it’s still incredibly painful,” said Koji, now 64 with hair that’s turned grey during the long campaign to prove his father’s innocence.
Japan has a reputation for “hostage justice,” a term used to describe the detention of suspects for questioning, often without access to legal counsel, for far longer than the law allows in other countries.
With a conviction rate of over 99%, human rights groups say innocent people are being jailed for crimes they didn’t commit.
Sakahara first filed for a retrial in 2001. Even after his death a decade later, his family kept pushing for a new hearing, which was repeatedly challenged by prosecutors in all three levels of court.
Sakahara’s long wait for justice inspired a new bill that, if passed, could make it harder for prosecutors to appeal decisions granting a retrial.
Officials within Japan’s Justice Department argue that the proposed changes could undermine the finality of convictions.
However, Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi – a right-winger who counts Britain’s Margaret Thatcher among her political idols – has backed the legislation, telling parliament last month that it’s vital to ensuring the retrial system delivers prompt justice.
“It is unacceptable for innocent people to be punished,” she said. “If a final judgment convicts an innocent person, that person must be promptly exonerated.”
A quiet life upended
Koji Sakahara says in the early 80s his family was living an ordinary life in Hino, a quiet town about an hour’s drive east of Kyoto.
“Everyone in our family was working; we had no financial struggles, and I believe we were having a happy life with our father, who was very devoted to his children,” he said.
But their world turned upside down in December 1984 after the disappearance of a local liquor store manager in a suspected murder-robbery. Her body was found a month later in a field.
Sakahara was initially called in by police for questioning because he was a frequent customer to the store. However, he was released shortly after his wife was able to prove that he was drinking somewhere else on the night, according to Koji.
Sakahara later told his son he’d been beaten and kicked and only buckled after officers began to direct the threats at people around him, said Koji, who had confronted his father about his confession.
The next day, police took Sakahara away. “He never came home again,” Koji recalled. Sakahara argued his innocence during his trial but was convicted based on police claims that he was able to lead them to the location of the body, and separately the site of the safe that was stolen from the liquor store.
Throughout the 24 years Sakahara was locked up, his son and other family members would visit him and tell him to hang on, as they fought to get his case reheard. “You can’t give up in a place like this,” they would tell him.
But his father contracted pneumonia in 2011, and after two decades in prison, his body was too weak to fight it.
Sakahara passed away that year. “You don’t have to fight anymore. It’s okay to let go. You’ve worked so hard until now,” his sister told their father moments before his heart stopped beating, Koji recalled.
All these years, the stigma stuck no matter how hard the family fought to change the narrative. “People viewed us as a family of a criminal,” said Koji, adding that his mother used to get harassing calls, heckling “murderer.”
The family won a retrial based on negative film stored within evidence files that their lawyer argued shows that police may have guided Sakahara to the location of the body.
Sakahara is believed to be only the second person granted a posthumous trial in post-war Japan.
The first was in 1985, when six years after her death, Shigeko Fuji was acquitted of killing her husband. She spent 27 years in prison for the crime that evidence ultimately suggested was committed by an intruder.
Two years ago, another man, Iwao Hakamata, was acquitted after spending more than 46 years on death row for a murder his lawyer said he was forced to admit.
Overdue reforms
Part of the problem in Japan is the lack of legal representation for those brought in for questioning over an alleged crime.
Japan hasn’t made access to lawyers during interrogations an absolute right despite being a member of The Group of Seven (G7) – an intergovernmental forum of the US and other Western allies that often emphasizes the importance of human rights and the rule of law. These failures have long drawn criticism from the United Nations Human Rights Committee.
Japan’s legal system has also been criticized for handing prosecutors too much power. Under the proposed change, they’ll only be able to appeal a retrial decision if there are “sufficient grounds.”
The country’s Justice Ministry had opposed the changes, claiming that limiting the scope for appeals could “undermine the institutional safeguards that ensure careful and fair judicial decisions.”
There is also “a significant risk that this would fundamentally alter the nature of interrogations – which play a crucial role in evidence gathering – and substantially undermine their effectiveness,” the spokesperson added.
Some criminal law experts, however, said the reform has been long overdue.
Law professor Tomonobu Ishida, at Meiji University in Tokyo, said delays for wrongly convicted individuals to seek justice are “one of the most serious problems in Japan’s criminal justice system.”
“In some retrial cases, it has taken decades before wrongful convictions were corrected. During that time, defendants and their families often suffer irreparable physical, psychological, and social harm,” he said.
Professor Koji Tabuchi, who specializes criminal law in Kyushu University in Fukuoka, said it’s time for prosecutors to forgo a zero-sum mindset when an individual’s liberty is on the line.
“When judges declare a defendant not guilty in Japan, prosecutors think: ‘We lost’,” he said. “But do they have to think so?”
Those waiting for justice in jail also aren’t getting any younger, said another expert in Japanese criminal law.
“Many of the defendants for petitioning for the retrial, they’re very old and they actually have no time left,” said Kana Sasakura, law professor at Konan University in the western city of Kobe.
Sakahara’s lawyer Ryota Ishigawa, who had been fighting his case for 20 years, says the decision to grant a retrial came too late.
“As the defense team, we are deeply disappointed. There is fundamental injustice in the system as a whole. We’re frustrated that we couldn’t celebrate with the defendant,” he said.
For Koji, change can’t come soon enough — the years of fighting for justice for his father have burdened him with guilt and regret.
“If the retrial had been granted while he was alive, he would still be here,” he said, of his father.
“I sincerely hope that Japan will, as soon as possible, bring its legal system in line with other countries, so that no more victims of wrongful convictions have to suffer.”"
The entire story can be read at:
PUBLISHER'S NOTE: I am monitoring this case/issue/resource. Keep your eye on the Charles Smith Blog for reports on developments. The Toronto Star, my previous employer for more than twenty incredible years, has put considerable effort into exposing the harm caused by Dr. Charles Smith and his protectors - and into pushing for reform of Ontario's forensic pediatric pathology system. Please send any comments or information on other cases and issues of interest to the readers of this blog to: hlevy15@gmail.com. Harold Levy: Publisher: The Charles Smith Blog. FINAL WORD: (Applicable to all of our wrongful conviction cases): "Whenever there is a wrongful conviction, it exposes errors in our criminal legal system, and we hope that this case — and lessons from it — can prevent future injustices."Lawyer Radha Natarajan: Executive Director: New England Innocence Project; FINAL, FINAL WORD: "Since its inception, the Innocence Project has pushed the criminal legal system to confront and correct the laws and policies that cause and contribute to wrongful convictions. They never shied away from the hard cases — the ones involving eyewitness identifications, confessions, and bite marks. Instead, in the course of presenting scientific evidence of innocence, they've exposed the unreliability of evidence that was, for centuries, deemed untouchable." So true;
