The Los Angeles County Department of Coroner has officially concluded that the cause of death of Japanese businessman Kazuyoshi Miura, 61, in a Los Angeles jail in October was suicide in its report released Wednesday after an autopsy.
The report contradicts allegations by Miura's family and Mark Geragos, Miura's lawyer, that a pathologist they hired concluded that his client was murdered.
Miura's family and lawyer are considering filing a lawsuit against the Los Angeles police, which also had concluded there was no evidence to support anything other than suicide to account for Miura's death, according to sources.
The coroner's report stated that Miura strangled himself with a shirt tied to a bunk bed in his jail cell, concluding that his death "is a result of a suicidal hanging."
Miura died Oct. 10 after arriving from Saipan, a U.S. territory, to face trial on a conspiracy charge over the fatal shooting of his then wife, Kazumi, in Los Angeles in 1981. She fell into a coma after being shot and died a year later in Japan.
Miura, who was initially convicted but later acquitted of the crime in Japan in 2003, was arrested in Saipan in February in connection with the case.