The Shizuoka District Court sentenced a former construction worker to life imprisonment Thursday for burning a 19-year-old college student to death after abducting her two years ago.
Prosecutors had demanded the death penalty for Junya Hattori, 31, over the murder of Sachiko Yamane.
Presiding Judge Sachiko Takahashi said, "The defendant has no record of hurting or killing others in the past, and we cannot say he committed this murder under a carefully worked-out plan."
Hattori abducted Yamane in Mishima, Shizuoka Prefecture, on the evening of Jan. 22, 2002. He confined her in his car before pouring kerosene on her and setting her alight with a cigarette lighter.
Yamane was on her way home from a part-time job when she was abducted.
In demanding the death penalty, the prosecutors stated, "It was a cruel crime, in which the defendant murdered the victim out of fear that she might report him to police."
Hattori's lawyers said the death penalty was not merited because he did not intend to kill the woman.