LIMA (Kyodo) A Brazilian appeals court has upheld the four-year prison term handed to a Japanese-Brazilian man convicted for a hit-and-run case in Shizuoka Prefecture in 1999 that killed a 16-year-old girl.
But the court in the state of Sao Paulo reduced the compensation required to be paid by the defendant, Milton Noboru Higaki, 34, to relatives of the victim, Mayumi Ochiai, to 10 months’ pay at minimum wage (about ¥220,000), instead of 180 months (about ¥3.95 million), which was ordered in the previous court ruling in November.
Higaki was convicted of fleeing the scene after hitting the high school student on a national highway in Hamamatsu on the night of July 26, 1999.
Higaki, who left Japan shortly after the incident, appealed the ruling, saying the compensation was too high and that he could not afford to pay it.
The lower court ruling was the second case in which a Brazilian court has handed down a ruling to a Brazilian prosecuted at the request of the Japanese government for a crime committed in Japan, after one involving the murder of a restaurant owner in Hamamatsu that also resulted in a prison term.
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