1981 tourist killing may get day in U.S. court

updated 2:19 p.m. ET March 2, 2008

REDONDO BEACH, Calif. - The initial account of the 1981 shooting seemed to pass muster with Los Angeles detectives: A Japanese couple on vacation in California were shot during a downtown robbery by an unknown assailant.

It was a bold daylight attack, with the shooter firing from a car — but a crime not uncommon for this city. Police officers initially viewed Kazuyoshi Miura and his wife, Kazumi Miura, as victims.

Still, something didn't seem right to Los Angeles police Detective Jimmy Sakoda and several colleagues.

"There were some big question marks," Sakoda said Saturday, speaking at a news conference 20 miles south of downtown Los Angeles. "Really, what happened? Who are these people?"

In Sakoda's version of the events that day, Miura conspired with an assassin to have his wife killed so he could collect a hefty life insurance payout.

Now 72 and retired, Sakoda spent years investigating the shooting. Though he has rarely spoken about it in public, the case became his life's work. Almost three decades after the shooting, Sakoda may finally see his theory tested in a U.S. court.

Miura was recently arrested on a trip to the U.S. territory of Saipan, on warrants Sakoda and others crafted in May 1988. He is awaiting extradition to California to face murder and conspiracy charges.

Convicted in 1994
The 60-year-old clothing importer was originally prosecuted in Japan, with Tokyo authorities working closely with Sakoda and others in the U.S. to put together a case. He was convicted of murder in 1994 and sentenced to life in prison, but that verdict was eventually overturned because of problems with the evidence.

The U.S. and most state constitutions prohibit double jeopardy _ trying someone more than once for the same crime. In 2004, however, California legislators passed a law that allows someone tried in another country to stand trial here for the same crime.

Miura's lawyer, Shinichiro Hironaka, has said he will ask the Japanese government not to help U.S. investigators because the case has been closed in Japan.

Sakoda said he kept tabs on Miura's whereabouts over the years, periodically checking to make sure his arrest warrant was still active. He suggested several possible explanations about why Japanese prosecutors were unable to make the conviction stick.

One reason, he said, was that the case was evaluated by judges, not by jurors. He also suggested Japanese judges at various levels of the appeals process may not have scrutinized the evidence as thoroughly as they should have. This may have been in part because over time, the investigative paperwork had become overwhelming.

And unlike in the U.S., the Japanese legal system did not allow for the prosecution of a conspiracy charge under certain circumstances.

"We've always felt that we had a very strong case, and the Japanese felt they had an uphill battle," Sakoda said.

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