Defense lawyers filed an appeal Monday for a former cult leader sentenced to death for masterminding the 1995 Tokyo subway gassing that killed 12 people, a news report said.
Shoko Asahara was convicted in 2004 and sentenced to hang for masterminding the attack, in which members of the doomsday cult released deadly sarin gas on trains converging on the city's government district.
Defense lawyers filed an appeal with the Supreme Court after the Tokyo High Court threw out an appeal of Asahara's death sentence, the Kyodo News agency reported.
His lawyers argued that their client suffers from pathological mental stress caused by confinement and was unfit for trial.
The lawyers could not be reached late Monday to confirm the report.
I gather the Japanese have an interesting way of carrying out an execution. They create a 1-year window in which you will be killed. Then without warning, on a random day during that year, they take you from your cell and execute you, without notification to anyone until you are dead. It should also be noted that successful criminal appeals in Japan are as rare "as hen's teeth." |