JAPAN. DEATH PENALTY CONFIRMED FOR TSUTOMU MIYAZAKI

Japan's top court confirmed the death penalty for Tsutomu Miyazaki, a man who abducted and murdered four small girls. Miyazaki, 43, had admitted killing the four girls, aged between 4 and 7, in and around Tokyo in the late 1980s. He had appealed against the sentence on the grounds that he was mentally incompetent at the time of the crimes.
The Supreme Court rejected the appeal in January and on February 2 overruled an objection put forward by defence lawyers, clearing the way for the death penalty to be carried out.
Miyazaki's trial, which started in 1990, sent shock waves around Japan -- revealing a life dominated by his obsession with pornographic comics and videos of corpses. He had videotaped their corpses and ate part of one of them, reports said.
The case provoked soul-searching about the wide availability of violent pornography in Japan.
Miyazaki abducted the children from near their homes by enticing them into his car.
He tormented the parents of one victim by boxing up the remains of her body along with photographs of the child and delivering them to her home. Miyazaki also sent letters confessing to his crime under an assumed name.
A government survey in 2005 found just over 80 per cent of Japan's electorate supported capital punishment.