A Japanese court sentenced a man to death on Thursday, after he was found guilty of murdering three residents over the age of 80 at a nursing home in Kawasaki, southwest of Tokyo, four years ago.
According to the Yokohama District Court, Hayato Imai, 25, threw Tamio Ushizawa, 87, Chieko Nakagawa, 86 and Nobuko Asami, 96, off balconies at a Kawasaki nursing home in the Kanagawa Prefecture, where he worked in 2014.
Imai confessed to police but plead not guilty, claiming that he had made false statements due to pressure during interrogations. Judge Hidetaka Watanabe held that authorities did not ask him any leading questions and deemed his initial confession "highly credible," reported Japan Times.
According to KHQ-TV, the judges who heard the case, which included citizen participants, said the defendant's actions were ruthless and inhuman.
In November 2014, the first victim died after falling from a balcony. The remaining two suffered the same fate one month later, on separate occasions. Police arrested Imai in February 2016, after discovering he was the only person working at the time when all three incidents occurred.
During initial interrogations, Imai reportedly told authorities he committed the three murders because he found taking care of the victims to be "troublesome." But when police formally arrested him on suspicion of murder, he recanted.
Imai's defense lawyers claimed that the incidents at the facility could have all been the result of suicide and sought an acquittal for their client, while prosecutors demanded the death penalty and asserted that Imai's confession had matched the crime scene.
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