Since 2021, Ronda Payne has been buying Christmas gifts, wrapping them and setting them under the tree for her son Chris to unwrap.

She will continue doing so, she said during an interview with the Post-Tribune from her home in St. John, until Chris, who will turn 34 on Dec. 17, is released from the custody of a detention center in Japan, held for allegations of sexual assault that he claims he didn’t commit.

The evidence proving Chris’ innocence is there, his supporters say, from the pings on his cellphone that show he was in another part of the country to the DNA evidence that does not show a match, and even a text exchange between Chris and his then-girlfriend shortly after the alleged assault, which took place not far from where he lived in the Chiba Prefecture.

“It’s clearly a miscarriage of justice,” said Ronda Payne, who found out her son was taken into custody on Thanksgiving four years ago. He has been in solitary confinement in various Japanese detention centers ever since then.

‘We need to free him soon’

The Innocence Project of Japan has taken up Chris’ case, at the urging of his former girlfriend’s father.

A timeline on the Innocence Project of Japan’s website provides an overview of Chris’ case. According to that timeline, in July 2018, a woman in Ichikawa City, Chiba Prefecture, Japan, was attacked while walking home. Her attacker forced her to perform oral sex on him.

The woman spat after the attack, went home, gargled and rinsed her mouth, then reported the crime to the police. The police took a DNA sample from the victim’s mouth but were only able to obtain a trace sample that was further contaminated by being mixed with cells from her mouth, the website notes.

In February 2020, Chris was arrested in Yamanashi Prefecture for breaking and entering after becoming drunk and falling asleep in the entryway of a stranger’s house, according to the website. He was released the following day, but not before the police asked him to submit to a voluntary DNA swab. Chris consented, according to the Innocence Project.

In November 2021, Chris was arrested and indicted because his DNA profile was “consistent” with the attacker’s, according to the timeline on the website.

“Our volunteer attorneys reviewed the DNA analysis and realized that its probability calculation was working off the assumption that the perpetrator’s and Chris’ DNA types were a complete match, even though the perpetrator’s full DNA profile couldn’t be determined,” Kana Sasakura, executive director of the Innocence Project of Japan, said via email to the Post-Tribune.

Chris, according to the timeline on the website, got a second DNA analysis, referred to as the “Y Analysis.”

“On 10 January 2023 (six days before the trial), the attorneys from IPJ met with Chris and explained that the Y Analysis is not conclusive evidence. Chris immediately asked them to represent him,” according to the website.

Once private counsel is appointed, court-appointed attorneys must be removed from the case, Sasakura said in the email. The Chiba District Court dismissed the two court-appointed attorneys and cancelled the trial. After redoing the pre-trial proceedings, a new trial was scheduled to begin in June 2024.

Chris was convicted in the first trial at Chiba District Court and he was sentenced to eight years in detention, Sasakura said in her email. He and his attorneys appealed and the case is now pending in the Tokyo High Court. Chris was also transferred from a detention center in Chiba Prefecture to one in Tokyo.

Two issues have been raised since Chris filed his appeal, per the website. An independent analysis of the second DNA test alleges the data was manually edited to implicate Chris in the crime. Additionally, the defense team was able to get the login information for Chris’ cellphone and asked prosecutors to investigate Chris’ location at the time of the attack, using his cellphone location data.

“Usually, the High Courts dismisses appeals by the defendant fairly quickly,” Sasakura said via email.

In Chris’ case, however, she said the court decided to hear the testimony of a prosecution witness in October, which she said “is a good start.”

“Chris has been detained at the Tokyo Detention Center and his detention is now almost four years,” Sasakura said via email. “We need to free him soon.”

St. John resident Ronda Payne, whose son is currently in a detention center in Japan, points out photos on a posterboard her son made for a project in third grade as she speaks about her efforts to get him freed, on Wednesday, Sept. 17, 2025. (Kyle Telechan/for the Post-Tribune)

Payne’s next hearing is Dec. 11, according to an Instagram post by his supporters. The judge in the case has decided not to conduct additional questioning of the DNA analysts and experts, according to the post.

“This is not typical in cases with allegations of falsified evidence. They will issue their ruling at the next hearing,” the post states. “We don’t know what will happen, but we do know that Chris needs us to be there no matter the outcome.”

‘Dark days’

On Nov. 25, 2021, Thanksgiving, Ronda got a call from Chris’ friend that he had been picked up by police. At first, she thought it was a joke.

“I felt something. I didn’t want anything to happen to him,” she said, adding she recognized the number as that of one of Chris’ friends in Japan. “That 081, when that number comes up, that’s Japan. I never want to see that because when my son calls, we FaceTime.”

St. John resident Ronda Payne, whose son, Chris, is currently in a Japanese detention center, dabs a tear from her eye as she speaks about her and the Innocence Project of Japan’s efforts to get him freed, on Wednesday, Sept. 17, 2025. (Kyle Telechan/for the Post-Tribune)

She was calm at the time, she said, because it wasn’t what she termed a final call. “Jail we can do, because we can get through this. Anything else is final.”

She went ahead and hosted Thanksgiving that year.

As more details about the allegations against Chris and his arrest and detention began to unfold, the weight of his situation fell more heavily on his mom. The Thanksgiving dinners with 30 people stopped because, she said, if her son wasn’t having Thanksgiving, why should she?

“When he went in (detention), I started having dark days,” Ronda said through tears.

The founder and director of Midwest Elite Preparatory Academy in Merrillville, the school that Chris graduated from, Ronda would return from work to her home in Crown Point at the time and pray her neighbors didn’t see her as she collapsed in tears and crawled into the house.

“It was non-stop, a merry-go-round,” she said. “The U.S. Embassy didn’t even know what happened,” she said, though officials there were eventually able to locate her son.

Chris started taking classes at Purdue University Calumet, now Purdue Northwest, at 16, his mom said, though he never completed his degree. Chris taught himself Japanese and tested out of lower-level courses after a family friend serving in the military in Japan got him a bible in Japanese and he decided to study the language, his mother said.

Chris taught Japanese at his mother’s school and also went on a summer trip to Japan through Michigan State University.

Chris had been in Japan for eight years at the time of his arrest, his mother said. He worked for a time teaching English at a private school owned by a single mom, and eventually got an IT job with a firm in Tokyo. Chris was also involved in the mixed martial arts scene, according to his mom.

Ronda Payne and her son, Chris, in an undated photo. (Ronda Payne/provided)

Chris was last home in May 2021, seven months before his arrest. Ronda has been able to visit him once in Japan, in February 2023. She said she found out the day she was leaving with her sister that the Innocence Project of Japan was taking up Chris’ case; he had fired his public defender because he would have legal representation through the Innocence Project; and his pending trial was canceled.

When Ronda and her sister arrived at the detention center in Chiba to see Chris, she said she didn’t trust anybody. Her son’s attorney with the Innocence Project, Hiroshi Sato, led her into a room with a glass divider; Chris and a guard were on the other side of the divider.

Chris, his mother said, tried to put her at ease, telling her, “Mom, I need you to trust the attorneys because I trust them.”

The United States and Japan are allies, Ronda said, but that hasn’t moved her son’s case along. All she needs, she said, is for one person to hear her story. “The facts are there,” she said.

She noted Japan’s hostage justice system, a concern raised by Human Rights Watch, and how Chris’ case is part of a larger movement, from his arrest to allegations that the DNA results in his case were manipulated to implicate him in a crime he did not commit.

Her son’s attorneys, Ronda said, have told her that his case could help reshape Japan’s criminal justice system.

“This is personal for me. Once Chris gets out, I made a vow to keep fighting for other inmates who don’t have resources,” she said.

St. John resident Ronda Payne, whose son is currently in detention in Japan, holds a pile of letters and documents from her son as she speaks about him and the Innocence Project of Japan’s efforts to get him freed, on Wednesday, Sept. 17, 2025. (Kyle Telechan/for the Post-Tribune)

Ronda Payne said she contacted local, state and federal officials about her son’s case but only U.S. Rep. Frank Mrvan’s office offered any assistance. Mrvan’s office was not able to speak specifically about Chris’ case but the office’s senior advisor, Mark Lopez, said the most the office could do, generally speaking, would be to make the U.S. Embassy aware of the situation.

The embassy could provide legal resources and make sure the person is receiving humane treatment while in detention, Lopez added. Ronda Payne said she has been in contact with the U.S. Embassy in Tokyo and representatives have visited her son while he’s in detention.

Likewise, the State Department was not able to provide information on whether it is aware of or investigating Chris Payne’s case.

“The United States has no higher priority than the safety and security of U.S. citizens,” a State Department spokesperson said in an email to the Post-Tribune. “Whenever a U.S. citizen is detained abroad, the Department works to provide consular assistance in accordance with U.S. law and our responsibilities under U.S. and international law. Due to privacy and other considerations, we have no further comment at this time.”

‘Please, lend me your strength’

Though he couldn’t be there in person, Chris Payne wrote a statement for the Innocence Project of Japan’s symposium on the case against him that was provided to the Post-Tribune.

The symposium was held on the afternoon of July 5 and featured speakers from the Innocence Project, his attorneys, his supporters and others who believe he was wrongfully charged with sexual assault.

Chris Payne and his cousin, Kayla Bartnicki, when she visited him in Japan in 2019. (Kayla Bartnicki/provided)

“Despite more than a dozen bail requests, I have spent this entire time in brutal solitary confinement for more than three years and seven months. During the trial in the Chiba District Court, I fought fiercely against the terribly performed DNA analysis. With the help of IPJ, we built a logical and reasonable defense,” Payne wrote in his statement.

“Despite this, I was sentenced to eight years with labor, and almost an entire year served was not given…. This verdict may be the most outrageous, unbelievable, unscientific verdict I have ever heard of in my life.”

He goes on to say that during his appeal, the support he received from Dr. Simon Ford revealed the issues with the DNA analysis, as well as allegations that the evidence was “completely forged” to uphold prosecutors’ claims.

“Evidence that has decisively proven my innocence has been submitted since months ago…. And yet the prosecutor refuses to respond…. Nothing can move forward. Time has stopped and this hell has no end.

“Please, lend me your strength. I can’t do this alone. Please, share my story far and wide, my innocence, my pain, and the reality behind the curtains that hide this case.”

alavalley@chicagotribune.com

https://www.chicagotribune.com/2025/11/27/nwi-man-japanese-custody-four-years/