Ex-policeman gets 22 years for killing superior in Japan

February 8, 2019

Otsu, Shiga Pref., Feb. 8 (Jiji Press)--Otsu District Court sentenced a former policeman to a 22-year prison term on Friday for shooting dead a higher-ranking officer in a police box in Shiga Prefecture, western Japan, last year.

Presiding Judge Hiroki Ito said, "This is an unprecedented and serious case in which a policeman committed murder with the gun he carried on duty."

The prosecution had demanded 25 years.

During hearings, the former patrol officer, 20, admitted the charges.

The defense called for a lighter sentence, stressing that his capacity to distinguish right from wrong and control himself had been substantially impaired.

But the judge said the accused used the gun unerringly and completed the murder.

The former policeman had ill feelings toward the 41-year-old victim, Akira Imoto, over his instructions to the accused, the judge said.

But the former officer could have shared his problems with others around him, the judge said, adding that the fact he was minor at the time of the crime should not be taken into account.

Meanwhile, the judge said the police should have considered how to improve the training of young police staff.

According to the ruling, the former officer shot his superior in the back of his head and body at the police box in Hikone, Shiga, around 7:45 p.m. on April 11 last year (10:45 a.m. GMT) and ran away with a gun and bullets. Jiji Press