Shinpei Okubo was a Japanese man who was falsely convicted of the 2015 murder of his girlfriend Emi Terasawa as part of the "AD-9 conspiracy". In 2019, he was released from prison after his lawyer Takayuki Yagami proved that he had been framed by ADDC doctor Yoji Shono.
Biography[]
Shinpei Okubo was born in Tokyo, Japan. He suffered from depression and alcoholism and, during a fight with his girlfriend in 2009, he broke her finger, causing him to be charged with criminal assault and break up with her. The troubled Okubo found work as a janitor at the Advanced Drug Development Center, where he and the nurse Emi Terasawa formed a relationship after Terasawa observed the withdrawn Okubo's quiet changes, such as his strict sobriety.
In 2015, however, Okubo was accused of murder. While loading dirty laundry into his truck, he discovered the body of Koichi Waku in the back of the truck. Knowing that the police would immediately suspect him of the murder due to his criminal record, he made the poor judgment call of driving into the mountains and burying the body there, concealing evidence of his death. After the police discovered the body and Okubo's involvement in burying it, they arrested him and charged him with murder. Lawyer Takayuki Yagami of the Genda Law Office was able to prove Okubo's innocence in court by seeing through Dr. Yoji Shono's inconsistent testimony and through Terasawa's impassioned outburst in court, where she revealed her relationship with Okubo. Okubo was promptly found innocent.
Okubo's arrest
Not long after Okubo's release from jail, however, tragedy struck again. Shono, the true murderer of Waku, visited Okubo's apartment, injected him with alcohol as he slept, and proceeded to stab Terasawa 15 times before setting the apartment on fire. Police arrested a dazed Okubo, and public opinion almost unanimously turned against Okubo, with Yagami's law career being ruined by the perception that he had set a murderer free, with Terasawa's murder as a consequence. Okubo continued to maintain his innocence even while in prison, but he was sentenced to death.
In December 2018, Yagami reluctantly agreed to help prove Okubo's innocence, which he still did not believe, but he was ultimately able to uncover Shono's role in the murder, and Terasawa's brother Fumiya Sugiura - who initially blamed Okubo for her death - reconciled with the innocent Okubo. Okubo's sentence was overturned in January 2019 after Shono's culpability was discovered, and Okubo took up Sugiura's offer of visiting Emi's grave to bring the two together.