Death Sentence to Become Final for Sagamihara Care Home Killer

Written with extracts from JIJI 

March 30th 2020

YOKOHAMA – A man accused of killing and injuring a total of 45 people at a care home for disabled people in the city of Sagamihara, Kanagawa Prefecture, eastern Japan, in 2016, withdrew on Monday an appeal filed by his defense counsel against the death sentence handed down on him by a district court recently.

The sentence is set to become final at midnight (3 p.m. GMT) as Monday is the deadline for filing an appeal. It is rare for a capital punishment sentence to be finalized after only the first trial.

“I will not file an appeal no matter what ruling is made,” Uematsu, 30, said during the trial at Yokohama District Court in the prefecture. He also said in a media interview: “I have fully conveyed my claims during the district court trial, and going to second and third trials would take too much time. It’s a wrong thing.”