A 45-year-old man was sentenced Wednesday to life in prison for the 1996 murder in Yamanashi Prefecture of a Tokyo stock broker who had been his partner in a stock-fraud scheme.
Toru Odajima was sentenced at the Tokyo District Court for murdering Masaru Nishimura, 33, in February 1996. Nishimura worked as a broker at the Shibuya branch of Towa Securities Co., now Tsubasa Securities Co.
Prosecutors had demanded the death penalty. Odajima, whose trial began in April 1997, had pleaded not guilty.