A 21-year-old man was sentenced to death on Thursday over a 2021 murder-arson case, marking the first time a defendant age 18 or 19 at the time of a crime has been given the death penalty following the lowering of the age of adulthood from 20 to 18 in 2022.
The Kofu District Court in Yamanashi Prefecture gave Yuki Endo the death penalty for killing the parents of a girl he went to high school with and setting their home on fire.
Presiding Judge Jun Mikami said that the defendant had “the full ability to take responsibility for the crime” and that “his age is not a reason to avoid the death penalty.”