The Nagoya Detention House has rejected a request by three family members of two murder victims to have the 49-year-old killer's death sentence commuted to life imprisonment, a judicial source said Thursday.
Officials at the detention house informed Toshihiko Hasegawa on July 17 that they had rejected the written request submitted by the three relatives on May 23, the source said, adding that the reasons for the rejection were not disclosed.
In the letter, the family members asked that Hasegawa be allowed to atone for his crimes by serving time instead of being executed, the source said.
A lawyer for Hasegawa said the request for the sentence to be commuted does not mean the relatives have forgiven him.
Masamichi Ida, an accomplice to both murders, was executed in November 1998.
The letter was submitted by a brother of Teruyoshi Eguchi, a 20-year-old man drowned by Hasegawa and Ida in 1979, and a brother and the mother of Akio Harada, a 30-year-old man killed by the pair in a traffic accident staged in 1983 in a bid to collect 20 million yen in life insurance money.
A similar letter requesting that Hasegawa's sentence be commuted was submitted in 1997, but the detention house rejected it as well, the source said.
In 1993, the Supreme Court upheld death sentences imposed by lower courts on Hasegawa, who was also accused of murdering 39-year-old moneylender Yoshio Sakakibara in 1983.