TOKYO -- The Supreme Court, in an unprecedented ruling, today ordered the retrial of a convicted murderer whose sentence had been commuted from death to life imprisonment.
Norio Nagayama, 34, was convicted of shooting to death four people with a pistol he stole from a U.S. naval base near Tokyo in October 1968. He was 19 years old at that time.
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In ordering the retrial, Justice Susumu Ohashi said the crime committed by Nagayama was 'atrocious and callous' and took the high court to task for making a wrong assessment of the case.
Ohashi said the capital punishment could be given when the crime committed by a defendant is considered very serious.
