The Nagoya High Court, Japan, sentenced to death Keiki...

The Nagoya High Court, Japan, sentenced to death Keiki Muto, a man convicted in a 2002 murder-and-robbery case, raising the life imprisonment penalty imposed by a lower court. In May 2003, the Nagoya District Court sentenced Muto, 53, unemployed, to a life term for murdering a Nagoya bar owner and stealing cash, saying there was a possibility that he could be rehabilitated. But the high court imposed the harsher sentence, saying the crime called for the death penalty. "The extent of leniency which the first ruling acknowledged does not prevent the choice of the death sentence," Presiding Judge Junichi Koide said. On March 14, 2002, Muto entered a bar in Nagoya posing as a customer, strangled owner Harue Chiba, 61, and fled with around 8,000 yen in cash.