The Supreme Court upheld a ruling from two earlier...

The Supreme Court upheld a ruling from two earlier trials sentencing Susumu Kitagawa, 52, to death for assaulting four women and killing two of them between 1983 and 1990. The court's No. 2 petty bench, rejecting an appeal from Kitagawa, found him guilty of robbery and the murder of a 24-year-old woman in Kochi in February 1989. In handing down his ruling, Presiding Judge Hiroharu Kitagawa said, "The crime was cold-blooded and inhuman, making the death sentence unavoidable even after taking his repentance into consideration."