The Supreme Court has upheld the life sentence given to a 27-year-old Chinese man who killed two people and injured another as a minor in two robbery cases in 2001 and 2002, sources familiar with the case said Saturday.
In a decision dated Thursday, the top court's No. 1 petty bench dismissed the appeals of both the defendant, whose name is being withheld because he was minor at the time of the crimes, and prosecutors, they said.
The man was convicted of conspiring with accomplices to steal cash cards from Satoshi Yoshino, 73, who was the guarantor of one of the assailants, and of fatally stabbing him and seriously injuring his wife at their home in Kitsuki, Oita Prefecture, in January 2002. He was 19 at that time.
The man also conspired with one of the accomplices in December 2001 in the fatal stabbing of a 35-year-old woman at a hotel in Osaka and stole her cash cards.