The Supreme Court on Monday upheld the death sentence for a man convicted of murdering four members of a family during a robbery in Chiba Prefecture in 1992 when he was 19 years old.
It is the first time since 1990 the death penalty has been finalized for a perpetrator who was a minor at the time of a crime. In that case, Norio Nagayama was given the death sentence for a series of fatal shootings in 1968. He was hanged in 1997.
Presiding Judge Tsugio Kameyama of the Supreme Court's second petty bench said Monday that the defendant, whose name has been withheld, in the 1992 case carried out the murders because he needed money to give to gangsters.