The Tokyo High Court on Thursday overturned a lower court decision in a lay judge trial that sentenced a 62-year-old man to death for murder, commuting the sentence to life in prison.
In March 2011, a panel of three professional and six citizen judges in the Tokyo District Court gave the death penalty to Kazuo Ino for killing 74-year-old Nobuji Igarashi only six months after serving a 20-year prison sentence for killing his wife and daughter in 1988.
The presiding judge in the high court trial, Hitoshi Murase, said Thursday the lower court erred by placing too much emphasis on Ino's previous crimes.