Miura, 61, will mark his sixth month of detention in Saipan on Friday pending his extradition to California where he was charged with murder and conspiracy to commit murder.
His defense team expects the hearing to resume this week but no date has been specified yet.
Mike West, a law professor at the University of Michigan, took the stand on Friday in the Los Angeles Superior Court before Judge Steven Van Sicklen, to testify for the prosecution team that conspiracy law doesn’t exist in Japan’s justice system.
Japan’s Supreme Court acquitted Miura of murder in 2003 for the death of his wife Kazumi who was mysteriously shot in the head in L.A. in 1981.
According to L.A. prosecutors, double jeopardy will not apply on Miura’s case because he was tried and acquitted of murder in Japan but not for conspiracy to commit murder.
William Fitzgerald and Bruce Berline, two of Miura’s defense counsels here, countered that “kyoubou,” or conspiracy, is recognized in Japanese law.
“Professor West said ‘kyoubou’ was incorrectly translated (by the defense) but he never offered any other word to replace ‘kyoubou,’ ” said Fitzgerald during a hastily called news conference on Saturday afternoon.
He said even the Japanese Supreme Court recognizes kyoubou as conspiracy saying the nation’s grand bench — 15 sitting justices — have used the word starting in a 1958 decision.
“They used the word kyoubou 22 times and every time, the official Web site of the Japanese Supreme Court translated that word kyoubou in English as conspiracy,” he added.
The defense’s expert witness is William Cleary, an American lawyer who currently teaches law at Hiroshima Shudo University and the first from the U.S. to obtain a Ph.D. from Hokkaido University in Japanese public law.
He testified in his affidavit that the U.S. and the Japanese justice systems are similar.
Establishing the difference between the two is crucial to the defense’s double jeopardy argument to save their client from facing capital punishment in California.
Miura, a former clothing importer, was once regarded a crusader of peace in Japan until his former lover confessed to authorities they plotted to kill his wife in exchange for insurance payouts.
Japan likens Miura’s case to O.J. Simpson who was also accused of killing his wife but was later acquitted.
California amended its Penal Code in 2004 to allow the prosecution of defendants with prior foreign convictions or acquittals.
However, Miura’s lead counsel in California, Mark Geragos, argued this rule should not apply to his client because he was acquitted before the law was changed — the law is generally applied prospectively not retroactively, unless specified.
