A jury trial began on September 20th at the Okayama District Court for a mother accused of strangling and killing her 8-year-old son, who was severely intellectually disabled, in Wake Town, Okayama Prefecture in June 2022. The mother admitted to the indictment, saying, “There is no doubt.”
Under the system, welfare and other workers assist in defense lawyers’ activities in the investigation and court hearing stages and propose rehabilitation support plans suitable for the defendants in terms of their disabilities and characteristics.
The system, dubbed the “Osaka Model,” has achieved some results, but seems to have reached a turning point as it faces challenges to secure welfare and other personnel.
During questioning in the sixth hearing at Kyoto District Court, Shinji Aoba, 45, facing murder and other charges, said he learned from the arson attack against a branch of consumer finance firm Takefuji Corp., which went bust later, in the city of Hirosaki in Aomori Prefecture in 2001.
It was a chilling act, and one with an unusual motive. The death of the 79-year-old woman was not a mercy killing. The husband bore no ill-feelings toward her, nor did he feel overburdened by caring for her for about 40 years. Instead, he stubbornly felt that he, and he alone, should be the one tending to the needs of his beloved partner, even when he became too weak to do the job.
It was a chilling act, and one with an unusual motive.
The death of the 79-year-old woman was not a mercy killing. The husband bore no ill-feelings toward her, nor did he feel overburdened by caring for her for about 40 years.
Instead, he stubbornly felt that he, and he alone, should be the one tending to the needs of his beloved partner, even when he became too weak to do the job.
Explaining his state of mind just after the incident, Shinji Aoba, 45, facing murder and other charges, told the third hearing that he thought the police officers who came to apprehend him were public security department members because they arrived very quickly in response to the fire.
According to investigative sources, Kimura still remains silent during questioning. The prosecutors office in Wakayama Prefecture, western Japan, judged that he is capable of taking criminal responsibility, based on psychiatric evaluation conducted on the suspect for about three months until Friday.
A man accused of carrying out a deadly arson attack on a Kyoto Animation Co. studio four years ago admitted the charges in the indictment, in the first hearing of his trial at Kyoto District Court on Tuesday.
“I didn’t imagine that so many people would lose their lives, and I now think that I went too far,” Shinji Aoba, 45, said at the outset of the lay judge trial, admitting that he carried out the attack.
The Sapporo District Public Prosecutors Office in the capital of
Hokkaido, northern Japan, obtained approval from Sapporo
Summary Court on Thursday to examine whether the 29-year-old
woman, her father, 59, and her mother, 60, are mentally
competent to bear criminal responsibility, the investigative
sources said.
Lawyers for the parents filed a complaint against the approval
with Sapporo District Court on Friday.
A man who attacked passengers on a crowded Tokyo train on Halloween night in 2021 while dressed as the Joker was sentenced to 23 years in prison on Monday for stabbing one of them and lighting a fire.
Barrier Free Japan