NIIGATA (TR) – The Niigata District Court last month handed a 72-year-old man a life-in-prison term over the fatal bludgeoning and robbery of a male acquaintance in Joetsu City two years ago, reports NHK (Jan. 29).
On January 29, president judge Kensuke Kobayashi handed the life term to Kazuo Ogura, a resident of Ueda City, Nagano Prefecture, for fatally bashing Reiji Nakamura, 62, at the victim’s residence in Joetsu in June of 2023 and stealing his wallet containing approximately 1.2 million yen.
“The crime was brutal and resulted in a lot of damage,” Kobayashi said. “There is no room for sympathy given the motive or circumstances.”
The prosecution had sought a life term. The defense, meanwhile, requested a 15-year prison term, arguing that the crime was actually murder-theft, not robbery-murder.
At the opening of the trial on January 20, Ogura partially denied the allegations. “I killed [him] with the hammer, but [my intention] was not to make money,” he told the court.
Ogura was also charged with breaking into the home of the same acquaintance two months earlier and stealing approximately 260,000 yen in cash.
At a hearing on January 22, the prosecution challenged the defense’s claim that the defendant had no intention of stealing money. “It is so abrupt and unnatural that the idea of stealing property came to mind just about two minutes after the assaults began,” the prosecution said, “that it is inconceivable that there was any intention to steal property at the time the assaults began.”
The court sided with the prosecution.
“Given that he took the bag containing Nakamura’s wallet shortly after hitting him with the hammer,” presiding judge Kobayashi said, “and that he had a large amount of debt at the time, it is natural to assume that he intended to steal something valuable.”
