Kyoto prosecutors appealed to the Osaka High Court on Oct 29 against a lower court ruling that acquitted a senior member of a Kudo-kai affiliate gang of murdering the president of the company behind the "Gyōza no Ōshō" restaurant chain, the Asahi Shimbun reported.
The defendant, Yukio Tanaka, 60, was cleared on Oct 16 of murder and of violating the Swords and Firearms Control Law. The Kudo-kai, based in Kitakyushu, is one of a small number of organized crime groups designated by the government as especially dangerous.
Takayuki Ōhigashi, then 72, was found dead in a parking lot outside the headquarters of Ōshō Food Service in Kyoto's Yamashina Ward in the early morning of Dec 19, 2013. He had been shot.
A cigarette butt at the center
Tanaka was arrested and charged after DNA from saliva on a cigarette butt found near the scene shortly after the killing matched his. Prosecutors built their case around that butt, arguing from its shape and from tests on how the cigarette had burned that it was smoked and discarded near the scene just before the killing, leaving no room for anyone else to have brought it there.
The defense argued the butt did not prove Tanaka carried out the shooting and sought acquittal.
In its Oct 16 ruling, the Kyoto District Court said it could not rule out that a third party planted the butt near the scene to frame Tanaka, or that he was ordered to scout the area without being told of the plan. It found "room for reasonable doubt" that he was the gunman and acquitted him. Prosecutors had sought life imprisonment.
Prosecutors cite errors of law and fact
Announcing the appeal, Masatoshi Morita, a deputy chief prosecutor at the Kyoto District Public Prosecutors Office, said the ruling contained violations of law and errors of fact, and that the appeal was filed to correct them.
The case drew attention because it put a killing at the door of a major food company's leadership. Ōshō Food Service runs the country's best-known chain of gyoza dumpling restaurants, and its president was shot outside the firm's own offices.
The appeal means the acquittal is not final. The Osaka High Court will now review the district court's reading of the cigarette butt, the only physical evidence tying Tanaka to the scene.