The Hiroshima High Court, Japan, upheld a lower court...

The Hiroshima High Court, Japan, upheld a lower court ruling sentencing to death Ryoji Ui for murdering Tamami Okatake, a female friend, and abandoning her body in Okayama Prefecture on August 9, 2001 while he was on parole. Ui, 64, had already been convicted of killing two women in the 1970s. He was sentenced to life in prison in 1980 but was paroled in 1999. The Okayama District Court had sentenced Ui to death in May 2003 for strangling Okatake, 57, at his apartment in the city of Okayama 1, after she refused to repay a loan. Ui abandoned her body in a bamboo grove in the city, according to the ruling handed down by the high court's presiding judge, Hiroshi Yasuhara. The district court had said there was no hope of him improving his recidivist tendencies since he committed the murder just a year and nine months after he had been released on parole.