the Japanese Supreme Court dismissed an appeal by a 60 year old man against

the Japanese Supreme Court dismissed an appeal by a 60 year old man against the death sentence for murdering his girlfriend's husband and one of her sons in the 1990s in Saga and Nagasaki prefectures for insurance money, thus finalizing the ruling. The counsel for defendant Kazuo Hokao argued that the death penalty was too harsh compared with the life imprisonment given to accomplice Reiko Yamaguchi, 49. In handing down the ruling to Hokao, Justice Norio Wakui, who presided over the case at the First Petty Bench, indicated that the man deserved the death penalty. According to the ruling, Hokao, in conspiracy with Yamaguchi, killed Yamaguchi's husband Katsuhiko, 38, in the waters off Saga Prefecture while disguising it as an accidental drowning in 1992, and obtained about 90 million yen in insurance money. Hokao and Yamaguchi also killed Yamaguchi's second son Yoshinori, 16, at a port in Nagasaki Prefecture in 1998, the ruling said. The Nagasaki District Court handed down the death penalty on the two, but the high court reduced the sentence for Yamaguchi to life in prison by saying there is a chance of rehabilitation for Yamaguchi.