Four years ago, in Sakai City, Osaka, a 48-year-old defendant was accused of murdering his father, who was suffering from diabetes, by administering a large amount of insulin to him, and of murdering his younger brother by disguising it as a briquette suicide. The district court sentenced him to life imprisonment.
The defense had pleaded not guilty.
Defendant Akemi Adachi (48), a former company executive in Minami Ward, Sakai City, administered a large amount of insulin to his father, Tomio (then 67), who was suffering from cancer and diabetes at his parents' home in the city in January 2018. Two months later, he was charged with murder and other crimes for murdering his brother Seiko (then 40) by making it look like a charcoal suicide.
In the trials so far, the prosecution has sought the death penalty on the grounds that ``he had a high degree of planning, such as preparing briquettes in advance, and killed his brother out of selfish desire to hide his father's crime.''
On the other hand, the defense argued that the defendant had no motive to kill her family and that her father may have died from an illness. .
Osaka District Court Chief Judge Hirotoshi Sakaguchi sentenced Adachi to life imprisonment.