Vietnamese woman acquitted of abandoning stillborn twins

Japan's Supreme Court has acquitted a Vietnamese woman of abandoning the bodies of her stillborn twins, overturning lower court rulings.

Le Thi Thuy Linh gave birth to the babies at her home in Ashikita Town, Kumamoto Prefecture in November 2020. She was a worker with Japan's technical training program at the time.

The 24-year-old defendant was accused of leaving the bodies for over a day in a cardboard box at her home.

The Supreme Court's Second Petty Bench considered whether the defendant's acts after the births could amount to the crime of corpse abandonment.

Presiding Justice Kusano Koichi on Friday noted that discarding or hiding a body in a way that cannot be conventionally regarded as a burial are deemed to be abandonment.

The justice said that the defendant delivered the twins alone at her home, wrapped their bodies in towels, placed them in a cardboard box, and put the box on a shelf.

He said that such actions do not mean that she did not intend to bury them. ...continue reading