JAPAN. HIGH COURT REDUCES MAN'S DEATH SENTENCE TO LIFE IN PRISON

the Sendai High Court, Japan, reduced from a death sentence to life in prison the punishment for Kiyoshi Ishii, a man convicted of killing a couple by torching their house in Fukushima Prefecture in 2000, denying he intended to kill. Presiding Judge Ryoichi Tanaka said, ''There is a room to believe the defendant torched (the house) as he lost himself in anger after quarreling with the victims.''
Ishii, 64, a garbage collector, torched the house in the town of Ishikawa, Fukushima, using gasoline, which burned Shigeyoshi Mimori, 74, and his wife Matsue, 69, to death on June 6, 2000, according to the ruling.
''The crime was serious but the act may have been characterized as coincidental. I feel hesitant about giving a death sentence,'' Tanaka said.
In its April 2004 ruling, the Fukushima District Court sentenced the man to death, saying the arson and murder were mediated. Attorneys for Ishii had argued that someone else may have committed the crime, citing a person who had borrowed a large amount of money from him via Mimori, but the judge dismissed the argument. Ishii and the Mimoris, who were farmers, had disputes over the disposal of garbage collected by Ishii, the high court said.