Saturday's arrest of Mr. Kazuyoshi Miura in Saipan, this time by Los Angeles police, in connection with the 1981 fatal shooting of his wife in the city came as a surprise to the Japanese public. Two decades ago the United States had let Japan arrest and try Mr. Miura, who eventually was acquitted by Japan's Supreme Court.
The suspicion that Mr. Miura had collected about ¥160 million from insurance policies on his wife following her death made him the focus of media coverage in the 1980s. The Metropolitan Police Department had arrested him and a former actress in 1985 on suspicion of the attempted murder of his wife for insurance money at a Los Angeles Hotel in August 1981. He was released in January 2001 after serving a six-year sentence.
Separately, in 1988, the MPD arrested Mr. Miura with another man, this time for the Nov. 18, 1981, fatal shooting of his wife. (She died a year later in Japan.) Mr. Miura was shot in the right leg in the incident. The Tokyo District Court sentenced him to life imprisonment in 1994, but the Tokyo High Court acquitted him four years later, and the Supreme Court let that ruling stand in 2003.
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