JAPAN. CHINESE MAN IN FUKUOKA FAMILY MURDER APPEALS DEATH SENTENCE

Wei Wei, a Chinese national, appealed a district court ruling that sentenced him to death for his part in the murder in 2003 of a family of four in Fukuoka, Japan.
In the May 19 ruling, the Fukuoka District Court found Wei, 25, guilty of robbery and the murder of Shinjiro Matsumoto, 41, a clothing dealer, his wife and their two children, in conspiracy with two other Chinese who later left Japan for China. His defense lawyers appealed to the Fukuoka High Court, saying the death sentence for Wei, who played only a subsidiary role in the crime, was unjust because one of his accomplices, Wang Liang, who played a more important role, got life term at a court in China. Wei was quoted as telling his lawyers that his feelings of remorse for the victims and bereaved relatives remain unchanged. Prosecutors demanded the death penalty for Wei, who pleaded guilty to the crime. Wei was a student at a Japanese-language school in Japan at the time of the crime. According to the ruling, Wei and his accomplices -- Wang, 23, and Yang Ning, 25, -- strangled Matsumoto with a necktie in the early hours of June 20, 2003, drowned his wife Chika, 40, in a bathtub, smothered their son Kai, 11, with a pillow, and strangled their daughter Hina, 8. The bodies of the four were found in Hakata Bay later that day, handcuffed and weighed down with dumbbells. The three intruders stole around 37,000 yen from the family. A few days after the murder was discovered, Wang and Yang, who were also in Japan on student visas, left for China. They were arrested by the Chinese authorities in August that year. In January, the Intermediate People's Court in Liaoyang in China's Liaoning Province sentenced Yang Ning, 25, to death and Wang, 23, to life imprisonment, after finding them guilty of the murders. Wei remained in Japan and was arrested in August that year on suspicion of assault in a separate case. He was held in custody and in January 2004 an arrest warrant was served on him for the murder of the Matsumotos.