Miyuki Ueda, death row inmate, died of asphyxiation… Tottori Serial Suspicious Deaths: Why was she not executed 13 years after her arrest?

On the evening of the 14th, at the Hiroshima Detention Center, where he was being held, death row inmate Ueda suddenly began to swell and collapsed. Ueda, who was eating, suddenly began to swell up and collapsed. A staff member rushed to him and took him to the hospital, but he died about two hours later.

On January 14, Miyuki Ueda, 49, a death-row inmate who had been sentenced to death for robbery and murder, died in a series of suspicious deaths in Tottori Prefecture. The cause of death is said to be asphyxiation caused by choking on food.

Ueda choked on her food and was rushed to the hospital for emergency treatment. However, he was diagnosed as ‘normal’ and returned to the detention center. It is expected that an investigation will be conducted to determine whether there is a possibility that the death was a suicide and whether there were any deficiencies in the management system.

However, one question comes to mind. More than 13 years have passed since the case came to light and she was arrested. Why was she not executed in spite of this?

It all started in November 2009. The Tottori Prefectural Police arrested Ueda on suspicion of fraud. In September 2012, her first trial was held, and in December of the same year, the Tottori District Court sentenced her to death, but she appealed her sentence. However, when the Supreme Court rejected his appeal in July 2005, his death sentence became final. A reporter in charge of judicial affairs for a national newspaper commented.

One of the reasons it has taken so long is the number of cases she is believed to have committed. In addition to the robbery and murder, she has been arrested and charged with 15 counts of fraud and many other crimes. Normally, the time between arrest and first trial is a few months, but in this case it took almost three years.”

However, the Code of Criminal Procedure stipulates that the execution of a sentence is “within six months” from the time the sentence is finalized. Why was her sentence not carried out more than five years after her death sentence was finalized in July 2005?

The provisions of the Code of Criminal Procedure are, so to speak, a kind of “target for effort. The provisions of the Code of Criminal Procedure are not legally binding. It is said that the average time between the finalization of a sentence and its execution is about five years, so it is not that there was a particular delay in the execution. However, there has long been criticism that this ‘within six months’ standard has become a skeleton.

Death row inmate Ueda consistently maintained her innocence and never uttered a word of remorse at her trial. In response to her death, one of the victim’s family members responded to a media interview, “I don’t know how to take it.

The time has come to consider once again whether there are really no problems with the current operation, not to mention an investigation to determine whether there were any deficiencies in the management system.