JAPAN. COURT OVERTURNS DEATH SENTENCE FOR INSURANCE MONEY MURDER

the Sendai High Court, Japan, sentenced Toshio Hosoya to life in prison for killing his wife and her mother to obtain insurance money, overturning a lower court's death sentence on the grounds that the crime had not been a carefully worked out plan.
Hosoya, 67, drove his car into the sea in Konoura, Akita Prefecture, now part of the city of Nikaho, on October 13, 2002, drowning his wife Kazumi, 59, and her mother Haruko, 84, who were in the back seat. He escaped from the submerged car, according to the Akita District Court ruling. He killed the two in order to repay some 18 million yen in debt to a consumer loan firm by obtaining life insurance money, it said.
Reducing the punishment, Presiding Judge Hideaki Hatanaka at the high court's Akita branch said, ''The murder plan cannot be said to have been carefully worked out, while the possibility of the defendant's correction should not be denied.''
Hosoya had admitted to the charges on the first hearing at the lower court, but turned to plead innocent at the second hearing, saying that he did not drive his car into the sea intentionally but ''made a driving error.''
The defendant appealed to the high court after the district court sentenced him to death in September 2004. In the appeals trial, he again turned to plead guilty but claimed the death sentence was inappropriate. ''I denied the charges, because I was told by my cellmate that (the case) could be taken as an accident. But I have come to believe I have to tell (the truth) to my daughters,'' he said.