JAPAN: COURT UPHOLDS DEATH PENALTY FOR BROTHER'S MURDER

the Tokyo High Court in Japan upheld a lower court ruling that sentenced a man to death for having an acquaintance kill his younger brother in 2005, while he was on parole after serving time for another murder. Presiding Judge Fumihiro Abe heard that Shizuo Hasegawa, 65, asked his acquaintance Katsumi Suzuki, 34, to kill his younger brother Tsuneyasu, then 60, to get more of the assets that their mother had left them. Suzuki stabbed Tsuneyasu to death at his home in Utsunomiya, Tochigi Prefecture on May 8, 2005. He is now serving a 30-year prison term for murder. Hasegawa was sentenced to life imprisonment for murdering his employer in 1976 and released on parole in 2003. The Utsunomiya District Court sentenced Hasegawa to death in January in accordance with the prosecutors' demand.