Assets left by the late mother of a man on death row have allowed opponents of capital punishment to expand their financial support for convicted criminals facing the gallows.
Using a 10 million yen fund named for Sachiko Daidoji, who died in May 2004 at age 83, an activist group will provide 100,000 yen each to select convicts on death row every year so they can use the money to petition for a retrial.
Daidoji's 57-year-old son, Masashi, was sentenced to hang for his role in a radical group's 1974 bombing of the Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd. building in Tokyo's Marunouchi business district. The blast killed eight people. He is now seeking a retrial, saying he did not intend to kill anybody.