OSAKA -- The Osaka High Court on Tuesday overturned a lower court ruling and imposed a death sentence on a former rightist group member who killed two men in separate murder-robbery cases in Osaka Prefecture in 1992 and 1994.
Takehiko Kubori, 38, was earlier sentenced to life imprisonment for the two cases but prosecutors appealed the ruling handed down at the Sakai branch of the Osaka District Court.
"Both cases were carefully planned crimes with Kubori playing a key role in the execution . . . I cannot help but impose the death penalty on him," said presiding Judge Makazu Ikeda.
Kubori's lawyers had also appealed the lower court ruling, seeking a reduced sentence.
Kubori and Okada robbed and strangled Toshiaki Ichikawa, a 29-year-old car dealer, on a road in Moriguchi, Osaka Prefecture, in February 1992 and buried his body.
In April 1994, the two men strangled Haruo Fujita, 54, at a parking lot in Kawachinagano, Osaka Prefecture.
The two men robbed Fujita of 10 million yen he had brought to be used in a bogus deal set up by the two men. Kubori and Okada dumped Fujita's body in Lake Biwa in nearby Shiga Prefecture.
The same high court on Thursday upheld a lower court ruling sentencing Kaname Okada, 53, a fellow rightist, to life imprisonment in the two cases, the officials said.