Masumi Hayashi, convicted of murdering four people...

Masumi Hayashi, convicted of murdering four people by poisoning curry at a 1998 community festival in Wakayama, Japan, would break her silence when her appeal was heard at the Osaka High Court from April 20, her lawyers said. Hayashi, 42, had remained silent during her trial at the Wakayama District Court, which sentenced her to death in December 2002. But with her decision to speak in the hope of overturning the ruling, the defence lawyers said they would seek permission from the high court to question the defendant. According to the district court ruling, Hayashi killed four people, including two children, and made 63 others ill by lacing a curry stew with arsenic in the city of Wakayama on July 25, 1998, at a summer festival in the Sonobe district of the city. As prosecutors presenting no direct evidence linking Hayashi to the case, her lawyers had insisted on her innocence, arguing she had neither the motive nor the opportunity to put poison in the curry. The district court ruled, however, that the arsenic found in the curry and arsenic powder found in Hayashi's home and a storeroom belonging to a relative were identical, and that no one but Hayashi had the opportunity to put the poison into the curry.