The Supreme Court's No. 1 Petit Bench in a 3-1 decision on Feb. 20 upheld a high court ruling that sentenced a man to death for raping and strangling housewife Yayoi Motomura, 23, and murdering her 11-month-old daughter Yuka in Hikari, Yamaguchi Prefecture, in 1999. Juvenile Law prohibits sentencing to death persons who were younger than 18 at the time they committed their crime. The defendant, Takayuki Otsuki, was 18 years and a month old when he committed the double murder.
A danger exists that the top court's decision could set a strong precedent for trials dealing with heinous crimes by minors. This should not be allowed to happen despite the gravity of such crimes because the possibility of rehabilitation is very high for juveniles.
In two earlier trials, the Yamaguchi District Court and the Hiroshima High Court gave Otsuki a life sentence on the grounds that he was only one month older than 18 at the time of the crimes and that there was a strong possibility that he could be rehabilitated. But the Supreme Court remanded the case to the Hiroshima High Court, saying that the defendant's age is no longer a critical factor to avoid handing down a death sentence. In the retrial the high court sentenced Otsuki to death.