Tokyo —
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…