On January 8, in Osaka, prosecutors demanded the death...

On January 8, in Osaka, prosecutors demanded the death penalty for Yasutoshi Kamata, 58, for murdering a 9-year-old girl and 4 women and abandoning their bodies in the mountains in Nara and Osaka Prefectures between 1985 and 1994. Kamata, unemployed, of Nishinari Ward, Osaka, confessed to the murders in May 1995. The Osaka District Public Prosecutors Office took the rare step of treating 3 of the murders separately from the remaining 2, and demanded the death penalty for both sets of murders. They supported the demand by pointing to a criminal law provision that states that multiple crimes committed by a person who has served a previous jail sentence - as Kamata has - cannot be treated as a single case. Prosecutors said the death penalty was appropriate, because the accused had not expressed any remorse for his actions. On January 24, Kamata received the death penalty. Presiding Judge Nobuyuki Yokota of the Osaka District Court nevertheless found the defendant not guilty of the charges of demanding a ransom in the abduction of the schoolgirl.