The Supreme Court upheld a death sentence for a man...

The Supreme Court upheld a death sentence for a man who killed four members of a family in 1992 in a murder-robbery when he was a minor.
The court agreed with a 1996 Tokyo High Court decision to affirm a 1994 Chiba District Court ruling sentencing the man to death for breaking into an apartment in Ichikawa, Chiba in March 1992 and slaying the four.
The 28-year-old was 19 when he murdered them. According to the Juvenile Law, he cannot be identified because he was a minor at the time of the offence. People aged 20 and older are considered adults under Japanese law. The court said this ruling was the ninth such decision since 1966.
The last death sentence given to a person who offended as a minor was in 1990, when the Supreme Court sent Norio Nagayama to the hangman for a 1968 serial murder case in which four people were killed. Nagayama, who was also 19 when he killed, was hanged in 1997. His identity was publicized because he became a popular author while in prison.
"The death penalty is unavoidable, even considering situations including the fact that the defendant was a minor," the presiding judge, Tsugio Kameyama, said as he handed down the sentence.
"He committed the crime to get money demanded by gangsters. In his motives, we have found nothing to mitigate the sentence. The circumstances were very grave as he deprived four people of their lives," Kameyama said.
The man killed a 42-year-old corporate executive, his wife, 36, their 4-year-old daughter and the executive's 83-year-old mother, while injuring the only survivor, a daughter who is now 25, according to the ruling. He also stole 340,000 yen.
The man committed the murder-robbery because gangsters tried to extort 2 million yen out of him for letting a Filipino hostess stay at his home, the ruling says.
Defence lawyers had argued for a lighter sentence, and referred to the Juvenile Law's prohibition of the death penalty for criminals who offend when they are under 18.
They said the man was 19 years and 1 month old at the time of the crime and that one year and a month should not mean such a difference.
They also argued he could be rehabilitated, and his ability to control his acts was impaired by abuse he suffered as a child at the hands of his father.