The Nagoya District Court on Wednesday sentenced two men to death and another to life imprisonment for abducting and killing a 31-year-old woman after the perpetrators had come to know each other through an underground Web site.
Wednesday's ruling can be regarded as being exceptional in that the death penalty was imposed on two defendants over the killing of one person.
Tsukasa Kanda, a 38-year-old former newspaper sales staffer in Toyoake, Aichi Prefecture, and Yoshitomo Hori, a 33-year-old unemployed man in Higashi Ward, Nagoya, were sentenced to death for the murder of Rie Isogai, 31, in Nagoya in August 2007. A third man, Kenji Kawagishi, 42, of no fixed address, received life imprisonment in connection with the case.
Presiding Judge Hiroko Kondo said in the ruling: "The way in which they killed the victim, after ignoring her pleas for mercy, was heartless and atrocious. We couldn't help feeling horrified by it."
Isogai, a temporary worker of Chikusa Ward, Nagoya, was abducted and killed by the trio. The three had been indicted on charges of murder, robbery and kidnapping for ransom.
The court sentenced Kawagishi to life imprisonment instead of death because he had turned himself in to police just after the crime.
The ruling noted the crime was unprecedented from the standpoint that the three became acquainted through an Internet bulletin board Web site, after which they planned and carried out the murder.
The ruling characterized the murder as a case of people who did not know one another's real identity sharing evil know-how and committing a crime that none could do alone. As a result, the ruling noted, the murder was extremely heinous and well-organized.
It is rare for death sentences to be imposed on two or more persons in a case in which only a single victim is slain. If Wednesday's death sentence is finalized, it will be the first such term meted out since April 1988, when the Supreme Court sentenced two people to death for killing a president of a hospital in Kitakyushu.
The ruling noted the three defendants had discussed their crime plan in a family restaurant on the day of the murder, and agreed to abduct and confine a female passerby to make her divulge the personal identification number of her bank ATM card.
The ruling concluded that the three had agreed to kill the victim and abandon the body before they committed the crime.
Based on the facts, the ruling cited:
-- The crime was motivated purely by financial benefit and there was no room for leniency.
-- The three abducted an ordinary citizen through no fault of her own and killed her after ignoring her pleas for mercy. The crime was merciless and atrocious.
-- Though the crime plan was not so practical or detailed, this factor cannot be considered decisive in avoiding the death penalty.
-- The judges could not find any words to sufficiently express the victim's suffering.
The ruling concluded capital punishment was an unavoidable choice to levy on the defendants.
