Sunday's passing of an 89-year-old death row inmate who had petitioned for a retrial for more than four decades not only once again raises the question of whether the police, prosecution and judiciary handled his case reasonably but also underlines the need to reform the nation's retrial system.

The death sentence handed down to Masaru Okunishi for the fatal poisoning of five women in 1961 was upheld by the Supreme Court in 1972. The murders occurred on the night of March 28, 1961, in Nabarai, Mie Prefecture, when 17 women were poisoned after drinking white wine at a community meeting. Five of them, including Okunishi's wife and his girlfriend, died while the 12 others fell sick. Initially Okunishi confessed to investigators that he laced the wine with a pesticide to end the love triangle. But he retracted his confession before he was indicted and throughout his trials insisted that he was innocent.

In his first trial, the Tsu District Court acquitted him in 1964, on the grounds that his confession to investigators concerning the motive as well as preparations for and carrying out the crime was unnatural. However, the Nagoya High Court sentenced him to death in 1969 mostly on the basis of the same evidence used in the first trial. The Supreme Court finalized the death sentence in 1972.