Kenji Yokota, 53, was sentenced to death by the Tokyo...

Kenji Yokota, 53, was sentenced to death by the Tokyo High Court for strangling a female acquaintance in 1999. The ruling overturned a life sentence previously issued by the Saitama District Court in June last year. Yokota was sentenced to death for strangling Akiko Saga, 21, at his home in Tokyo the night of Jan. 9, 1999, while he was on parole. The two had allegedly had an argument and Yokota cut her body into pieces with a kitchen knife and dumped it in a river. "The defendant overreacted to the victim's behaviour in the quarrel and killed her. It was a crime from the defendant's ruthless and brutal character," Presiding Judge Shogo Takahashi said, rejecting the district court's ruling of the crime as accidental. "Though there was only one victim, the death penalty is inevitable because it was a murder after the defendant was released on parole," Takahashi said, handing down the death sentence as demanded by prosecutors.