Former Supreme Court Justice Takao Ode died of heart failure at his home in Sano, Tochigi Prefecture, on Thursday, the court said Sunday. He was 73.
Ode, a Tochigi native and a graduate of the University of Tokyo, served as a Supreme Court justice from September 1997 to December 2001, when he resigned due to poor health.
In 2000, Ode presided over a Supreme Court decision that dismissed a damages claim against the parents of three juveniles convicted in the 1985 rape and murder of a 15-year-old girl. The decision implied the Supreme Court handed down a wrong ruling in 1989 convicting the three in the criminal case.
The damages claim went back to a high court, which dismissed the claim in October 2002, and the victim's family appealed to the Supreme Court again but withdrew the claim in March 2003, finalizing the trio's innocence.
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