California judge delays ruling in Miura case

A defense attorney claims Kazuyoshi Miura would face double jeopardy if he was tried in this country because his previous conviction in Japan was overturned by a high court.

Miura was visible during the hearing on a large movie screen via closed circuit camera in his Saipan jail cell. He listened on a cell phone to a translation of the proceedings.

Superior Court Judge Steven Van Sicklen heard lengthy testimony from an expert on whether Japan has a law regarding conspiracy and if Miura had already been tried on the charge in that country.

The expert, Mark West, a professor at the University of Michigan, said Japanese courts don’t have a conspiracy law but do have a theory called Article 60 that allows consideration of collusion between defendants as the basis for a murder verdict.

Defense attorney Mark Geragos said outside court that the testimony meant Miura could not be tried in this country without facing double jeopardy.

“This is nonsense,” Geragos said, adding that he might call his own expert witness when the man returns from Mongolia.

Sicklen decided to wait for the expert to become available before scheduling another hearing.

Prosecutors have argued that the 60-year-old Miura cannot claim double jeopardy because he never entered a plea under California law and was not tried here. At the time of the killing, California law barred prosecution of someone already tried in a foreign jurisdiction. However, that law was changed in 2005.

Even if the charge of murder is barred under double jeopardy provisions, Miura can be tried for conspiracy to kill his wife because he was not convicted or acquitted of that crime in Japan, prosecutors have said.

The courtroom was packed with Japanese media. The long-running case has been a cause celebre in Japan, where it was dubbed “the Japanese O.J. case.”

Miura, a clothing importer, said he was shot along with his wife in a street crime. He held news conferences denouncing Los Angeles as an unsafe city for tourists.

His wife died of her injuries, and he returned to Japan and collected $700,000 on three separate insurance policies on her life.

But Japanese authorities took another look at the case and Miura was tried and convicted of the murder in 1994. That conviction was overturned by the Tokyo High Court in 1998 and Miura was freed.

He was arrested on the California charges in February when he entered the U.S. territory of Saipan.