The Osaka District Court sentenced a man to death Wednesday for killing three people he got to know through a Web site for would-be suicides in 2005.

In handing down the sentence on Hiroshi Maeue, 38, presiding Judge Kazuo Mizushima pointed out the cruelty of the serial killings and the unlikelihood that he could be rehabilitated.

Maeue's counsel appealed the ruling.

Prosecutors had demanded the death penalty, insisting he could pose the threat of a repeat offender because he cannot control his sexual urges triggered by seeing a person being strangled and suffering.