Exactly four years ago in this column, I wrote that, egged on by the media, which had already tried and convicted Masumi Hayashi for murder in the Wakayama Curry Poisoning Incident even before she was arrested, "the police . . . proudly announced that they have enough circumstantial evidence to convince everyone that Hayashi is guilty and will worry about a motive later."
Their prescience was affirmed last week, when the Wakayama District Court imposed the death penalty on Hayashi, with presiding Judge Ikuo Ogawa declaring that the circumstantial evidence was sufficient for a guilty verdict but that no clear motive was revealed.
To anyone who believes in the rights of the accused and due process, the ruling is bound to be disturbing, but the general mood in the media has ranged from philosophical (the Asahi Shimbun's editorial called the lack of evidence and motive "frustrating") to gleeful.