'Twitter killer' sentenced to death for 9 murders

Dec 15, 2020 | News On Japan

Dec 15, 2020 (Japan Today) - A Japanese court on Tuesday sentenced a man dubbed Japan's "Twitter killer" to death for the 2017 murders of eight women who posted suicidal thoughts on social media, and a brother of one of the victims.

Takahiro Shiraishi, 30, was found guilty in the high-profile case by the Tachikawa branch of the Tokyo District Court of murdering, dismembering and storing the bodies of the nine in his apartment near Tokyo.

Presiding Judge Naokuni Yano ruled that the none of the eight women consented to being killed, and that Shiraishi was mentally fit to be held responsible for the murders.

The judge described the crimes as extremely vicious, adding the case had given people a cause for concern regarding how deeply rooted social media has become in society.

Whether Shiraishi killed the victims with their consent was the major point of contention in the lay judge trial.

Prosecutors had sought the death penalty for Shiraishi, who pleaded guilty to the crimes, but defense lawyers had argued that he was guilty only of the lesser charge of homicide with consent as he had his victims' tacit approval based on messages they sent him.

While prosecutors pointed out that there was no way the victims consented to being killed based on Shiraishi's testimony that they resisted when being strangled, the defense team argued that they only did so due to their "conditional reflexes."

The defense also claimed that Shiraishi was possibly either mentally incompetent or was in a state of diminished capacity at the time of the murders.

Source: ANNnewsCH

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