Prosecutors demanded a 15-year prison term June 18 for a 39-year-old Saitama Prefecture man accused of murdering his former doctor in a Tokyo railway station in 1994.
Masami Nomoto, formerly a company worker from Urawa, is accused of gunning down 47-year-old Takejiro Okazaki, head of a metropolitan hospital, near the ticket gate at Aomono Yokocho Station of the Keihin Electric Express Railway Co. on Oct. 25, 1994. Nomoto held a grudge against Okazaki, who had performed surgery on his hernia, because his physical condition worsened after the operation, according to prosecutors.
The trial has focused on whether Nomoto was suffering emotional problems that would reduce his criminal liability, as his defense has argued in demanding leniency. During the Tokyo District Court session June 18, prosecutors dismissed that argument, but one said that “the accused acted in a rational way based on a carefully laid plan, and there was almost no problem in his ability to tell right from wrong when he committed the crime.”
