The Nagoya District Court sentenced a 17-year-old youth from Nagoya's Meito Ward on Monday to a two- to four-year prison term for stabbing his comatose twin brother to death in February.
"The crime was hard-hearted and brutal, based on a planned and firm intent to kill," the presiding judge, Yoji Ishiyama, said in the ruling.
The court found that the youth, whose name is being withheld because he is a minor, had been looking after his twin brother on Feb. 25 when he stabbed him in the chest with a knife at around 1 p.m. to fulfill the twin's wish to kill himself. The brother went comatose following a suicide attempt in May last year.
Prosecutors had sought a three- to six-year prison term.