High court scraps lay judge ruling that cleared Saitama man over deadly arson

The Tokyo High Court on July 14 scrapped a lay judge ruling that found a man not guilty of murdering his wife and 4-year-old daughter in an arson attack at their home in Saitama Prefecture in 2008, and sent the case back to the Saitama District Court, saying the lower court had made a clear factual error.

On trial is 42-year-old Teruyuki Yamano. In sending the case back to the district court, Presiding Judge Minoru Uemura stated, "There was a clear factual error in the district court decision, which determined that there was reasonable doubt over whether the defendant was the perpetrator of the arson. The court should shed further light on the source of the fire."

Lawyers for Yamano plan to file an appeal against the high court's decision.

The Tokyo court's ruling is believed to be the first to scrap the acquittal of a defendant charged with murder in a trial heard by citizen judges. If the high court's decision is finalized, then the district court will go through the process of selecting new lay judges and hearing the case again.

In the district court trial, public prosecutors noted that Yamano was captured on a security camera going out immediately after the time the fire is thought to have broken out, and that the defendant had wanted to marry another woman. They had sought a life sentence.

The district court, however, said it was possible that the fire started after the defendant left the home, and that it could not dismiss the possibility that his mentally unstable wife was responsible for the arson.

In the latest ruling, the high court said a combustion experiment based on the estimated time the fire broke out could not be accepted as reproducible.

"There is a high possibility that the wife was sleeping at the time due to the effects of sleeping medicine, and the possibility that she committed the arson cannot be accepted," the court ruled, siding with public prosecutors.

Yamano was charged with setting his home on fire on Dec. 3, 2008, killing his 33-year-old wife and 4-year-old daughter through carbon monoxide poisoning. From the time of his arrest he had consistently denied the allegations against him.

A lawyer for Yamamo criticized the latest ruling as "unfair."

Deputy chief prosecutor Toru Sakai commented that it was an "appropriate ruling that corrected the mistake of the district court ruling.