Japan's Supreme Court upheld lower court rulings sentencing...

Japan's Supreme Court upheld lower court rulings sentencing to death Seiha Fujima, 43, for killing five people during eight months in the early 1980s. Fujima fatally stabbed a high school girl, 16, her 13-year-old sister, and their 45-year-old mother in 1982 at their home in Fujisawa, Kanagawa Prefecture, after the girl turned down his romantic advances, according to the lower court rulings. He then stabbed to death a man, 19, who had helped him kill the three women, in Amagasaki, Hyogo Prefecture. In 1981, Fujima killed a 20-year-old man in Yokohama because of a dispute over money, the earlier rulings said. Justice Kunio Hamada, who presides over the top court's Third Petty Bench, said "The crime was extremely brutal...the death penalty should be approved." The Yokohama District Court sentenced Fujima to death in 1988, which was upheld by the Tokyo High Court in 2000. Defense lawyers working for Fujima then appealed, saying the defendant was indicted based on illegally collected evidence.