HIRANO Tatsuhiko
Japan's National Daily Since 1922
https://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20200127/p2g/00m/0na/061000c
Japan high court overturns death sentence for man accused of killing 5 neighbors
January 27, 2020 (Mainichi Japan)
OSAKA -- The Osaka High Court on Jan. 27 overturned a lower court death sentence handed to a man for fatally stabbing five neighbors in Hyogo Prefecture in 2015, giving him life imprisonment instead.
Tatsuhiko Hirano, 45, was convicted of murdering five people aged between 59 and 84 in his neighborhood in Sumoto, Hyogo Prefecture, western Japan. As he had a history of hospital visits and admissions for mental disorders, the trial turned on whether he could be held criminally responsible for the killings.
In a lay judge trial ruling handed down in March 2017, the Kobe District Court had concluded that the defendant could be held fully liable for the murders, though it acknowledged that at the time of the crime he was mentally disturbed due to a heavy intake of psychotropic drugs.
According to the district court ruling, Hirano stabbed Tsuneko Hirano, 79, and her 82-year-old husband Takeshi several times in the chest and other parts of their bodies with a survival knife at their home on Awaji Island on the morning of March 9, 2015. He carried out similar attacks on Hiroyuki Hirano, 62, and his 59-year-old wife Masako, and Hiroyuki's mother Shizuko, 84, at their home on the same island south of Kobe. All the five victims died.
(Japanese original by Fumie Togami and Hiroshi Muramatsu, Osaka City News Department)
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March, 2017
KOBE -- The Kobe District Court on March 22 sentenced a 42-year-old man to death over the killing of five people in Hyogo Prefecture in 2015, dismissing lawyers' arguments that he was mentally ill.
Tatsuhiko Hirano, 42, was handed the death penalty after being convicted of fatally stabbing five neighbors with a survival knife in two separate homes on Awaji Island in Hyogo Prefecture, on March 9, 2015. The victims, three women and two men, were aged between 59 and 84.
Hirano had a history of medical treatment for a psychiatric disorder, and in the trial he denied the allegations against him, saying that he was "manipulated by agents with magnetic waves."
The focus of the case was whether Hirano could be held criminally responsible for his actions.
Public prosecutors said that delusions bore no influence in the killings and that Hirano was mentally competent. Defense lawyers, meanwhile, argued that the killings wouldn't have occurred without the delusions brought on by Hirano's mental condition. They said that he either couldn't be held criminally responsible, or was of diminished capacity, warranting a lighter sentence.