Yoshihiro Yasuda

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Yoshihiro Yasuda bigraphy, stories - Japanese lawyer

Yoshihiro Yasuda : biography

December 4, 1947 –

Yoshihiro Yasuda (安田 好弘 Yasuda Yoshihiro, born December 4, 1947) is a famed and controversial lawyer in Japan who is known for his anti-death penalty activism. http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2013/01/29/national/tokyo-theater-to-screen-films-for-death-penalty-week/#.UTfuj9Eackd With the death penalty being a prominent method of prosecution in the Japanese judicial system for violent criminals, Yasuda has a history of defending many of these criminals as he wishes to prevent the death penalty from being imposed. As an advocate for the abolition of the death penalty, Yasuda has been able to successfully prevent a large number of death sentences from being handed down in his career. At the time Yasuda took on many of these violent cases, such cases were seen as damaging to a lawyer’s career, and therefore, there existed only a small number of lawyers who took on such cases because many feared the media bashing, and could not expect much compensation. A significant number of these cases were then defended by Yasuda, and this concentration was viewed as problematic by some critics. He took part in many of these controversial trials because he believed that the suspects were tried unfairly as a result of the mass media bashings.http://www.videonews.com/on-demand/261270/000149.php Yasuda is also known to reject television appearances for he dislikes the mass media.

Criminal cases

Trial of Shinjuku bus attack

Yasuda was one of the defenders of a Shinjuku bus attacker who killed six people in 1980. The attacker wasn’t sentenced to death, but he committed suicide in 1997.

Japan Air Lines Flight 404

Japan Air Lines Flight 404 was an airliner hijacked by Palestinian and Japanese terrorists on July 23, 1973.http://aviation-safety.net/database/record.php?id=19730723-0 As of 1987, Yasuda was elected to the counsel of the accused (Osamu Maruoka). Osamu Maruoka received the sentence of life imprisonment.

Aum Shinrikyo Incident

Shoko Asahara, the founder of the religious cult group Aum Shinrikyou, was trialed as the mastermind behind the crime his followers perpetrated, which included the Tokyo subway sarin gas attack. http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2004/03/07/national/levitation-drug-claims-and-er-melons-blur-reality-in-asahara-trial/#.UTfui9Eackd Yasuda was the court-appointed attorney to defend Asahara in 1995, but was forced to quit the team in 1997 due to his arrest for obstruction of the compulsory execution concerning a corportation in which he was an advisor for (See arrest of Yasuda). Some critics pointed out that this accusation was implemented because prosecutors were angry at Yasuda’s court tactics to delay the trial as long as possible to avoid the sentence of a highly possible death penalty for Asahara. 1,200 lawyers listed as Yasuda’s defenders, and Japan Federation of Bar Associations and Amnesty International protested that this accusation was unfair. After his legal complications were settled in 2003, Yasuda became Asahara’s private lawyer, and in September 15, 2006, the Supreme Court handed down the original judgement of the death penalty on Asahara.

Masumi Hayashi (poisoner)

Yasuda defended Masumi Hayashi, who was convicted of putting poison in a pot of curry being served at a 1998 summer festival in the Sonobe district of Wakayama, Wakayama, Japan. Yasuda was asked by Kazuyoshi Miura, who was exchanging letters with Masumi Hayashi, to work on this trial. Despite Yasuda’s efforts, she was sentenced to death in 2002. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/2564865.stm

Arrest of Yasuda

On December 6, 1998, Yasuda was arrested on the reason that he obstructed justice (the compulsory seizure of rental income of one of the failed jusen mortgage lenders). http://www.jpri.org/publications/critiques/critique_VI_10.html Yasuda was charged with advising Singaporean real estate developer Sun Chungli and his son Naoaki, to set up a dummy company to hide assets. Sun was president of “Sun’s Corporation Tokyo Ltd..,” a major borrower from the several former, now obsolete junsen housing loan companies. Yasuda was accused by the police of conspiring with Sun to hide rental income of approximately 200 million yen by using a dummy company by the name of Wide Treasure. The police suspected that Yasuda instructed the Sun family on how to hide assets. Yasuda acknowledged that he became the legal advisor for Sun in 1991, but argues that he gave advice within a legal framework. Yasuda denies the charges, and claims he had no involvement in the Wide Treasure operation while the Sun family pleaded guilty. Yasuda was incarcerated in a police station cell from the time of his arrest on December 6, 1998 until he was transported to the Tokyo Detention House on January 6, 1999. Normally, in cases such as these, bail is granted and withheld only in the case that the prosecutor can prove the accused is either a danger to society, may destroy evidence or flee. On the sixth attempt of Yasuda’s defense team to request bail, the District Court granted bail on June 11, 1999. On the same afternoon, however, the prosecutorial authorities filed a protest against the bail and the bail was cancelled; Yasuda remained in jail. No motive was established for Yasuda, and therefore, many believe this was a case of bekken taiho, an arrest on a charge unrelated to an investigation as he was defending the Aum’s former leader, Shoko Asahara at the time. http://books.google.com/books?id=A9CDvNs35ooC&pg=PA40&lpg=PA40&dq=yoshihiro+yasuda+japanese+lawyer&source=bl&ots=egLwczVFbq&sig=YJLXVXrr8fh324vzT5HfBjKka4c&hl=en&sa=X&ei=u5w2Ufm_Gom_0AGOrIHABg&ved=0CD4Q6AEwAzgK#v=onepage&q=yoshihiro%20yasuda%20japanese%20lawyer&f=falseAs a result of his ten month arrest, Yasuda was unable to remain on the Asahara case. Yasuda was acquitted in 2003. http://japandailypress.com/death-penalty-movie-week-to-be-held-at-tokyo-theater-3022346