With prosecutors' indictment of the man accused of committing the deadly stabbing spree at a care facility for people with disabilities in Kanagawa Prefecture last summer, it will now be in the hands of the judiciary to unravel the man's motives behind the horrific crime. At the same time, efforts to come to grips with how and why this man came to harbor his distorted views toward the victims — that people with disabilities are not needed in society and should be eliminated for their own salvation — and the fight against such ways of thinking should not be confined to the courtroom but shared across society as a whole.

After killing 19 residents and injuring 27 others in the attack last July at the facility in Sagamihara where he used to be a care worker, Satoshi Uematsu, 27, was subjected to a psychiatric evaluation over a five-month period to judge if he is mentally fit to be held criminally responsible for his acts. The Yokohama District Prosecutor's Office indicted Uematsu on Friday on charges of murder and attempted murder as they determined that he is mentally competent to be tried. He was judged to be able to tell right from wrong, although he was diagnosed as suffering narcissistic personal disorder — a condition in which people have an exaggerated sense of their own importance, an excessive desire for admiration by others and a lack of understanding of others.

Along with the grisly nature of attacking and killing the defenseless victims, what drew people's attention to the crime was Uematsu's acts of openly discussing his plan for the killing spree months before carrying it out — with his colleagues at work and even in a letter addressed to the speaker of the Lower House — which forced him into treatment at a mental institution, from which he was released after 13 days. Seven months after his arrest, the man is reported to be repeating to investigators his conceited ideas about people with disabilities, which smack of eugenics, to justify the murders.