Wednesday, April 25, 2007
TOKYO — The Tokyo High Court, in a ruling that singled out gun violence as particularly vicious, sentenced a 66-year-old man to death Wednesday for murdering one person in 2004, quashing a lower court's sentence to life imprisonment. Japanese courts have rarely issued capital punishment for a single murder by a defendant who has no previous record of murder convictions.
The court ruled that Tokuhisa Kumagai fatally shot Fumio Shimizu, a 77-year-old restaurant owner in Chinatown in Yokohama, in the face with a handgun and stole a bag containing 430,000 yen in cash on May 29, 2004. Kumagai also shot and seriously injured a subway station agent in a failed robbery attempt at Tokyo's Shibuya station June 23 of the year, the court ruled. Kumagai had been put in jail many times for assaults, robberies and thefts but had no history of murder convictions before the 2004 cases.
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Thursday, April 26, 2007
Man gets death for single slaying
Kyodo News
Condemning the use of a gun as a "vicious and heinous" act, the Tokyo High Court on Wednesday overturned a 66-year-old man's life prison term and sentenced him to hang for a single murder in 2004.
Courts rarely mete out capital punishment for a single murder by a defendant with no prior homicide convictions.
Prosecutors were seeking death for Tokuhisa Kumagai.
"A criminal act using a gun is more vicious and heinous than crimes using other weapons and draws condemnation in society," presiding Judge Shogo Takahashi said in handing down the ruling.
"The indignation and grief of the victim's kin is immeasurable," Takahashi said. "Given the mode of shooting where a gun was pushed against the right cheek (of the victim), this is not a case where the death sentence can be avoided just because there involved only one victim."
The court ruled Kumagai, unemployed, fatally shot Fumio Shimizu, a 77-year-old restaurant owner in Yokohama's Chinatown, in the face with a handgun.