The Kyoto District Court on Tuesday sentenced a woman to 11 years in prison over the 2011 murder of her mentally ill husband with the help of their son — a former doctor indicted for the alleged consensual killing of a terminally ill woman.

The court found Junko Yamamoto, 78, guilty of killing her 77-year-old husband Yasushi at an apartment in Tokyo by unknown means in collusion with her son Naoki, 45, and his acquaintance Yoshikazu Okubo, a 44-year-old doctor.

In handing down the ruling, presiding judge Hiroshi Kawakami said the defendant had for years shunned her husband, who had been hospitalized for treatment of his mental illness.

The judge said that she contacted a crematorium ahead of time at her son's instruction, and convinced the hospital in Nagano Prefecture to discharge her husband based on false information.

His death some seven hours after leaving hospital could not be considered natural, the court said, ruling he was killed.

According to the indictment, the three had Yasushi discharged from the hospital on March 5, 2011, and took him to the Tokyo apartment where he was killed on the same day.

Yamamoto pleaded not guilty and will appeal the verdict, her defense lawyer said. Prosecutors had sought a 12-year sentence.

The son is appealing his own 13-year sentence over his father's murder, which was handed down on Feb. 7. He and Okubo were also indicted in 2020 for the alleged consensual killing of a 51-year-old woman with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis at her Kyoto home in November 2019.

Euthanasia is not legally recognized in Japan.

The ongoing case will see the two men tried separately, and trial dates are yet to be confirmed.