The Tokyo High Court upheld an 11-year prison term Monday for a 19-year-old man convicted of killing a female schoolmate in the Tokyo suburb of Machida when he was 16 years old.
The court dismissed an appeal by the defendant, whose name has been withheld because he is a minor, against the sentence handed down in July 2007 by the Tokyo District Court's Hachioji branch for his fatal stabbing of Yua Koyama, 15, after she rejected his advances.
The defendant, then in his first year at a Tokyo public high school, stabbed Koyama several times with a kitchen knife on the evening of Nov. 10, 2005, at her home.
His lawyers asked that he be sent to a family court, saying he should be put in a juvenile reformatory rather than face a penalty based on a criminal court ruling.
His defense was based on the argument he was in a state of panic at the time of the killing as a result of a development disorder, that he was not mentally competent, and he did not intend to kill the victim.