JAPAN. DOG TRAINER HANDED DEATH PENALTY FOR KILLING 5 PEOPLE WITH MUSCLE RELAXANTS

Yoshinori Ueda, a man convicted of killing five people in 1992 and 1993 using muscle relaxants, was set to be executed after Japan’s Supreme Court rejected his appeal. Ueda, 51, had been sentenced to death after being convicted of murder and abandoning the bodies of the five victims.
"They were cold-blooded and inhumane crimes, and the result was extremely serious," Justice Kazuko Yokoo said in handing down the ruling, which supported the death penalty decisions handed down in earlier district and high court decisions.
Ueda admitted to the killings during the investigation stage of the case, but denied responsibility for the murders during his trials, saying he was assaulted by police and forced to confess. However, the district and high courts handling the case ruled that the testimony was credible.
During the high court trial, Ueda was subjected to a psychiatric evaluation, which found that he could be held criminally responsible for his actions.
According to the district and high court rulings, in a car parked on land he had leased in Nagano Prefecture, Ueda murdered three men aged between 20 and 33 in June 1992 and July that year by injecting them with muscle relaxants normally used to put animals to death.
He committed the murders over financial trouble relating to the launch of a pet shop and breeding business, the rulings said. In October and November the following year, he killed two 47-year-old women in Osaka Prefecture by injecting them with muscle relaxants, and dumped their bodies in a field in Nagano Prefecture, according to the rulings.