A 33-year-old woman accused of murdering her former boyfriend, whose body was found in a suitcase in the Tama River near Tokyo in December 2023, admitted to the allegation in a trial at the Yokohama District Court on Tuesday.
At the first hearing of the lay judge trial of the defendant — Mai Nishitaka, who is unemployed — the prosecution said in its opening statement that "the victim was not at fault to a degree that would warrant being killed."
The prosecution claimed that Nishitaka played a significant role in the murder, describing her act as "highly premeditated and driven by a firm intention to kill."
In the trial, presided over by Judge Takao Sato, the defense argued that the victim had provoked the defendant and her family by criticizing them in a livestreamed video and was therefore partly to blame.
According to the indictment, Nishitaka conspired with her family members and another accomplice, and had her former boyfriend, Tadayuki Hara, then 46, consume a drink containing sleeping pills at an apartment in Tokyo's Ota Ward in December 2023, before strangling him.
They are believed to have placed the body in a suitcase and abandoned it in the Tama River in Kawasaki.
In July this year, the Yokohama District Court sentenced Nishitaka's father, 54, to 13 years in prison and her 41-year-old former boyfriend to 15 years in prison for the murder and other charges. Both have appealed the rulings.
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