WAKAYAMA (Kyodo) Lawyers for a woman sentenced to death for killing four people in 1998 by poisoning curry at a festival in Wakayama have asked for a reanalysis of her hair, saying earlier tests that found arsenic in a hair sample were erroneous, sources said Monday.
The lawyers for Masumi Hayashi, 48, filed the request with the Wakayama District Court in March, the sources said.
According to the request, the lawyers are questioning the credibility of the analyses, in which high concentrations of arsenic were detected and which the Supreme Court accepted as evidence, saying that the point on the hair sample where arsenic was detected was several millimeters apart in two analyses.
Hayashi was convicted of killing the four and poisoning 63 others by lacing a curry stew with arsenic during a community summer festival on July 25, 1998.