光市母子殺害事件 元少年の死刑確定へ

On the 20th, the Supreme Court's First Petty Bench (Judge Kanazuki Seishi, presiding) dismissed the appeal of a former juvenile (30) who was convicted of murder, rape resulting in death, and other crimes in the 1999 murder of a mother and child in Hikari City, Yamaguchi Prefecture, and sentenced to death in 2008 by the Hiroshima High Court on retrial. The Hiroshima High Court's retrial decision that sentenced him to death has now been finalized. The defendant whose appeal was dismissed was Takayuki Otsuki (formerly Fukuda), a former juvenile who was 18 years and 1 month old at the time of the crime. The trial will conclude 13 years after the crime occurred. Since the Supreme Court established the criteria for applying the death penalty (the Nagayama criteria) in the first appeal decision of former death row inmate Nagayama Norio in 1983, this is the first time that the death sentence has been upheld for a defendant who was a juvenile at the time of the crime in a case involving two murder victims. He is believed to be the youngest of those on death row known to the Supreme Court. The bench pointed out, "The crime, which trampled on the dignity of the victim, was a cold-blooded, brutal and inhuman act. The defendant has offered irrational excuses for the manner of the murder, and no sincere remorse can be seen in it." It then stated, "Even if we take into full consideration the extenuating circumstances, such as the fact that he was a minor at the time of the crime and that there is no denying the possibility of rehabilitation, the criminal responsibility is far too grave," and ruled that a death sentence was unavoidable.