Penalty on Gang Boss Was Reduced

Fukuoka High Court sentenced life in prison to the head of crime syndicate, Kudo-kai, for his involvement of a series of killing or injuring citizens, overturning death penalty of the district court. The high court strictly applied the law excluding assumptions to one of the four alleged incidents, in which Kudo-kai was involved. While turning down of death penalty for notorious gang boss shocked Japanese society, this may be one of the Japanese versions of rule of law. 

Fukuoka Regional Police arrested in 2014 the governor of Kudo-kai, Satoru Nomura, and the chairman, Fumio Tanoue, with suspect of killing a chief of fisheries cooperative in 1998. They were also arrested those two gangsters with suspect of shooting a policeman with Fukuoka Prefectural Police Office in 2012, stabbing a nurse in 2013, and stabbing a dental doctor in 2014.

 

The decision of first court, Fukuoka District Court, found that Nomura had been the mastermind of all of those cases and sentenced death penalty for Nomura and life in prison for Tanoue. On the case of killing the chief of fisheries cooperative, the first court assumed that he had a motivation in the case being interested in the port business and that Nomura and Tanoue had only been the two people who could order the assault to their subordinates. Nomura argued he was innocent.

 

In the trial at the high court, the defendants tried to separate Nomura from the case of killing the chief of fisheries cooperative. Nomura’s subordinates started arguing that Nomura had not been involved in the conspiracy of killing the chief, trying to prove that Nomura did not know about the case. The point of trial became whether Nomura was included in the conspiracy.

 

The sentence of Fukuoka High Court recognized that the decision of Fukuoka District Court had been gone beyond the truth, if the district court supposed that Nomura did not have any choice but killing the chief. And the high court found no evidence that Nomura had been the only person who could order the murder. Although the court recognized guilty on other three cases, it avoided death penalty, because the victims in those three cases were not killed.

 

The decision of district court lacked hard evidence of killing. It was supported by supposition that Nomura must have enough motivation and ordered his subordinates a murder. However, the high court dismissed the decision mainly supported by circumstances. While Nomura left the words to the chief judge of first court, “You will regret for the life time,” he just bowed to the chief judge after the sentencing of the appeal court. The experts expect that the decision of the high court, life in prison for two gangster leaders, works for deterring another crime, even if it was not death penalty.

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