Man Gets Death Penalty for Quadruple Murder in Nagano

Nagano, Oct. 14 (Jiji Press)–Nagano District Court on Tuesday sentenced Masanori Aoki, 34, to death for the May 2023 murders of four people in Nagano Prefecture, central Japan. Giving the defendant capital punishment as requested by prosecutors, Presiding Judge Masashi Sakata said, “It was an extremely cruel crime based on a strong intent to kill, ” recognizing that Aoki was fully competent. In the lay judge trial, the biggest focus was whether the suspect could be held criminally responsible. After the ruling was handed down, the defendant side indicated it would appeal, based on its assertion that indefinite imprisonment was appropriate because Aoki was mentally incompetent at the time of the crime. Sakata said Aoki “acted according to his emotion and thoughts,” mentioning that he went back home to collect the murder weapons and tried to conceal the victims’ bodies. Sakata emphasized that Aoki excluded witnesses and plainclothes police officers from his targets. Sakata added that Aoki fully maintained the capacity to control his actions and to judge between right and wrong and his delusions only partly influenced his motive. “We cannot help but feel horrified” by Aoki’s casual disregard for human lives and his having killed his victims one after another, the judge said. Sakata concluded that “there are no circumstances that would avoid the option of death penalty,” adding that the consequences of his murders of the four blameless victims were tragic and grave. The bereaved family of victim Yukie Murakami, then 66, said after the ruling that she “will never come back” and “we hope that the defendant will face what he did and be punished.” On the evening of May 25, 2023, Aoki fatally stabbed two local women–Murakami and Yasuko Takeuchi, then 70–with a knife while they were out for a walk in the city of Nakano in Nagano, according to the ruling. He also killed two police officers–Yoshiki Tamai, then 46, and Takuo Ikeuchi, then 61–who had gone to the scene in response to an emergency call, with a knife and a hunting rifle. END [Copyright The Jiji Press, Ltd.]