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Convicted Murderer on Death Row Dies After Choking on Her Dinner

vice.com/en/article/z34dya/japan-death-row-inmate-choking

Miyuki Ueta was one of over a hundred iamtes on death row in Japan. Photo: Getty Images

A Japanese woman awaiting execution for drugging and drowning two men has died after choking on her own dinner, the country’s justice ministry said Sunday.

Miyuki Ueta, a former bar worker, was eating in her cell on Saturday afternoon when she began to choke. Workers at the detention center, located in the southwestern prefecture of Hiroshima, tried to pull food out of the 49-year-old’s mouth, but she had already lost consciousness, Japanese national broadcaster NHK reported.

Ueta was sent to the hospital but was confirmed dead less than three hours later. She died of suffocation, the Japanese ministry of justice said.

Ueta had a near miss four days before her death, when she also choked on her food and was rushed to hospital. She survived and was returned to the detention center.

Ueta was sentenced in 2012 to death after being found guilty of killing two men she owed money to in 2009 in Tottori prefecture, on Japan’s west coast. She maintained her innocence and appealed her case, but the judge upheld her death sentence in 2017.

Capital punishment remains legal in Japan and much of the rest of Asia. In Japan, prosecutors usually seek the death penalty in cases of multiple homicides or particularly egregious murders. Following Ueta’s death, there are now 105 people on death row in Japan.

The death penalty is broadly accepted in Japan, although international rights groups have condemned the country’s practice of hanging prisoners with just a few hours’ notice. Capital punishment abolitionists point to cases of wrongful convictions in which innocent people have been put on death row.