JAPAN: MAN SERVING LIFE FOR MURDER SENTENCED TO DEATH FOR ANOTHER MURDER

December 15, 2015: A 40-year-old man already convicted of killing a woman in Aichi Prefecture in 2007 was sentenced to death for a murder in 1998.
Nagoya District Court Judge Taro Kageyama sentenced Yoshitomo Hori to death as sought by prosecutors in a lay judge trial for the murder of Ichio Magoori, 45, and his wife, Satomi, 36, in the same prefecture in 1998.
In the 2007 murder case, Hori was initially sentenced to death in 2009 for kidnapping Rie Isogai, 31, in Nagoya with two men Hori met through a so-called darknet website for seeking “crime mates,” stealing her money and killing her.
Hori’s sentence was reduced to life imprisonment in 2011 by a higher court, which acknowledged the possibility of his rehabilitation. The sentence was finalized by the Supreme Court in 2012.
“It is rare that a death penalty is handed down to a defendant after his life imprisonment was finalized for a different case,” said Hiroki Nakajima, a criminal law professor at Heisei International University.
According to the indictment, Hori conspired with two different men and killed the couple at an apartment in the city of Hekinan and stole 60,000 yen in June 1998.
Hori is also suspected of having assaulted a woman in her 70s at an apartment in Nagoya and robbing her in 2006.
Regarding his two accomplices in the Isogai murder case, Kenji Kawagishi was sentenced to life in prison, while Tsukasa Kanda was sentenced to death and executed this past June. (Sources: KYODO, 16/12/2015)