Kazuyoshi Miura,hanged himself with his shirt in a downtown jail cell only hours after arriving to face trial

A Japanese businessman charged with plotting the murder of his wife in Los Angeles 27 years ago hanged himself with his shirt in a downtown jail cell only hours after arriving to face trial, police said Saturday.Kazuyoshi Miura, 61, was alone in his cell at downtown police headquarters when a detention officer found him at 9:45 p.m. Friday _ just 10 minutes after a routine cell inspection had found nothing unusual, Chief of Detectives Charlie Beck said at a news conference Saturday."It was apparent that the murder suspect, alone in his cell, had used a piece of his shirt as a makeshift ligature around his neck," Beck said.Officers rushed into the cell and gave Miura cardiopulmonary resuscitation while medical personnel from the dispensary were summoned. Miura did not respond to treatment and was pronounced dead at USC Medical Center, Beck said.Miura had arrived in Los Angeles early Friday morning after a trip from the U.S. commonwealth of Saipan, where he had been held since his February arrest on a 1988 Los Angeles County warrant alleging murder and conspiracy.He was scheduled to be arraigned Tuesday."I'm shocked," Miura's attorney, Mark Geragos, told The Associated Press in a telephone call from Italy. "One of my lawyers was with him for 12 hours yesterday, and he seemed in good spirits. He was looking forward to fighting this."Beck declined to answer questions about the motive for the apparent suicide and what the death means to investigators, who had pursued Miura for decades. He said that both he and Detective Rick Jackson, who was on the plane that returned Miura to the United States, were "shocked and disappointed."