Ui Ryoji
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68-year-old death row inmate dies
Friday, February 8, 2008
A death row inmate died Thursday, bringing the number of death row inmates with finalized sentences in Japan to 103, the Justice Ministry said. Ryoji Ui, on death row for the murder of three women, died of bile duct cancer at age 68 in a medical prison in Osaka Prefecture, where he had been undergoing treatment since April last year, it said.
In 1980, Ui was sentenced to life in prison for killing two women. After he was released on parole in 1999, he killed his girlfriend in August 2001. The Okayama District Court handed down the death penalty to him in 2003. (Kyodo News)
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Top court upholds death penalty in murder case by parolee
Saturday, December 1, 2007
TOKYO — The Supreme Court on Friday turned down an appeal by a 68-year-old man who has been sentenced to death for murdering a female friend and abandoning her body in Okayama Prefecture in 2001 while he was on parole on an earlier murder case, finalizing his penalty.
Ryoji Ui, a garbage collector, had already been convicted of killing two women in the 1970s. He was sentenced to life in prison in 1980 but was paroled in 1999. According to the ruling given by the Hiroshima High Court, Ui strangled Tamami Okatake, then 57, at his apartment in the city of Okayama on Aug 9, 2001, after she refused to repay a loan. Ui's lawyers told the top court that he deeply regretted his crime and there was still a possibility for him to reform. (Kyodo News)
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