Japan Top Court Backs Ruling Ex-Kodansha Editor Killed Wife

   Tokyo, March 11 (Jiji Press)--Japan's Supreme Court has upheld lower court rulings that sentenced a 49-year-old former senior editor of publisher Kodansha Ltd. to 11 years in prison for murdering his wife in 2016.
   The defendant had pleaded not guilty, saying that his wife, then 38, was mentally unstable at the time and hanged herself with a jacket tied to a stair rail in their home in Tokyo.
   In its ruling, dated Monday, the top court's Second Petty Bench supported the lower courts' findings that the wife did not commit suicide but was murdered by her husband. The latest ruling was made unanimously by the four justices of the bench.
   Tokyo District Court in 2019 found the defendant guilty, based on evidence at the scene. Tokyo High Court rejected an appeal against the ruling in 2021, based on different evidence.
   In 2022, however, the Supreme Court sent the case back to the high court, saying that its examination of the possibility of suicide was insufficient.

(2025/03/11-20:22)

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