New Evidence Presented in Seattle Incident Trial

By Jeff Farr
Associate Editor

Scientific tests on Nikken's diary, which was submitted as evidence by his lawyers in the Seattle Incident trial, suggest that Nikken did not tell the truth about his diary during his previous testimony. The test results indicate that a crucial part of the diary entry Nikken testified that he made on March 20, 1963, was actually added at a later date.

Two U.S. forensic experts, David S. Moore and Erich J. Speckin, examined Nikken's diary for the defense and made the finding; the defense team has since submitted their results to the Tokyo District Court (in Nichiren Shoshu's libel suit against the Soka Gakkai over its press coverage of the so-called Seattle Incident).

Under direct examination on Dec. 22, 1997, Nikken claimed that he was in bed by 1:00 a.m. on March 20, 1963, about an hour before the incident — his dispute with prostitutes and subsequent run-in with police — occurred. His cited proof was his diary entry, which ended “Now I am going to sleep. It's 1:00 p.m. now.” (Nikken explained that he sometimes confuses p.m. and a.m.).

The test results indicate that “It's 1:00 p.m. now” was added some time after the next day's entry was recorded. Mr. Speckin, a forensic document analyst and ink-dating specialist, used a high-powered microscope to show that impressions made by the next day's entry, which appears on the reverse side of the page, affected the ink flow in “It's 1:00 p.m. now.” This would not have been possible if Nikken had written it when he said that he did.

Another test, conducted by Mr. Moore, a forensic document examiner, employed specially filtered light shone on the page to reveal that the ink used for “It's 1:00 p.m. now” is most likely different from the ink used in the following paragraph, which Nikken testified he wrote at the same time with the same fountain pen.