JAPAN. DEATH SENTENCES UPHELD FOR MEN WHO BURNED SISTERS TO DEATH IN METAL DRUMS

Japan’s Supreme Court upheld the death sentence for two men convicted of stuffing two sisters into metal drums, pouring gasoline over them and burning them to death. Sentenced to death over the killings were 42-year-old used car dealer Yukinari Kawamura and 36-year-old assistant Tetsuya Nomura.
The convicted men, who faced charges including murder and robbery, had filed an appeal against the death sentences handed down to them in earlier court rulings, saying they had not planned the murders of the two women, but the second petty bench of the Supreme Court rejected their claims.
"They planned the crime with thorough care, and it was extremely malicious," Presiding Justice Isao Imai said, upholding the death sentences.
District and high court rulings said Kawamura and Nomura conspired with two others to kill and rob the manager of a coffee shop. In the predawn hours of April 4, 2000, they attacked the manager when he returned home, hitting him with a block of timber and injuring him, then stole his car, the earlier court rulings said.
To silence the man's 64-year-old wife and her 59-year-old sister, who were at the scene, the men abducted them, and after stealing money and other items from them, took them to a mountain region in Seto, Aichi Prefecture, where they stuffed them into metal drums, poured gasoline over them and burned them to death, the courts heard.