Death Penalty News

NARA, Japan — More than three years after the assassination of former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe stunned Japan and reverberated around the world, the man who killed the country’s longest-serving leader was sentenced to life in prison on Wednesday. The ruling brings formal closure to one of the most shocking crimes in Japan’s postwar history, while leaving unresolved questions about political accountability, religious influence, and the rare eruption of gun violence in a nation defined by its absence.

KOBE (Kyodo) -- A court on Friday handed a man a life sentence for killing three members of his family with a crossbow at his home in western Japan in 2020, a case that prompted the government to tighten rules on possession of the weapon. The Kobe District Court refrained from imposing the death penalty sought by the prosecutors on Hideaki Nozu, 28, with Presiding Judge Chiwaki Matsuda noting his developmental disorder had affected his motives. According to the ruling, Nozu fatally shot and killed his 75-year-old grandmother and his 22-year-old brother, both of whom lived with the defendant, and his 47-year-old mother, who was visiting their home in Takarazuka, Hyogo Prefecture, on June 4, 2020.

The gunman accused of killing Japan's former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe pled guilty Tuesday, three years after the assassination in broad daylight shocked the world. The slaying forced a reckoning in a country with little experience of gun violence, and ignited scrutiny of alleged ties between prominent conservative lawmakers and a secretive sect, the Unification Church. "Everything is true," Tetsuya Yamagami said at a court in the western city of Nara, admitting murder of the country's longest-serving leader in July 2022. The 45-year-old was led into the room by four security officials.

The archbishop of Tokyo, Cardinal Isao Kikuchi, is renewing calls for abolition of the death penalty  in Japan and for clemency for 2 men, 1 convicted of murder and already sentenced to death, the other awaiting sentencing.  In 2023, Masanori Aoki stabbed 2 women in the city of Nakano and then shot 2 policemen with a hunting rifle. His defense team asked for a lesser sentence, saying the man suffered from schizophrenia, but the sentencing court imposed the death penalty on Oct. 14. 

Masanori Aoki, now 34, stabbed two women who were taking a walk in the city of Nakano, then shot two policemen with a hunting rifle A Japanese court has sentenced to death a man who killed four people in a shooting and stabbing attack in 2023, rejecting the defence's argument that he has schizophrenia. Masanori Aoki, now 34, stabbed two women who were taking a walk in the city of Nakano and then shot two policemen - who arrived at the scene after receiving an emergency call - with a hunting rifle. Gun violence is rare in Japan, where strict firearms laws are in place. Even rarer is the shooting of multiple police officers. The last such incident happened more than 30 years ago.

Earlier this month, family members of some of the 23 people killed and 22 people injured by a mass shooter at an El Paso Walmart in 2019 confronted the killer for the first time in a federal court. They’d waited nearly four years. Some were barely able to speak through tears. “I still remember everything so clearly, even though I have tried to erase it from my memory,” one teenager said, according to media reports. They should not bear these memories alone. Against the waves of gun violence that seem to regularly beat against this country, we have called for a vigil of memory, testimony and witnessing. At times we have mourned alongside communities. Other times we have called for action. Steady oars in angry waters.

Newly revealed documents detail how an Ohio father allegedly executed his three sons and how the boys’ mother and sister heroically tried to save them. The bill of particulars against defendant Chad Doerman, 32, sheds light on how he allegedly killed the children and even how long he contemplated the act. But it falls short on revealing a key detail — the motive for the deaths of Chase, 3, Hunter, 4, and Clayton, 7. Doerman returned home from work early on June 14, according to the bill of particulars obtained by WCPO. He allegedly asked his wife and sons to join him for a nap in the master bedroom. His rifle, a Marlin Model HC .22, was next to the bed, authorities said. Meanwhile, the boys’ sister watched TV in the family room.

The suspect accused of using an AR-style rifle to terrorize a Colorado LGBT nightclub – killing five people and injuring 19 others – has pleaded guilty to five counts of first-degree murder and 46 counts of attempted murder. Anderson Lee Aldrich, 23, was sentenced Monday to five consecutive life sentences without the possibility of parole for the 2022 massacre at Club Q in Colorado Springs, Colorado. Judge Michael McHenry also sentenced Aldrich to an additional 2,208 years in prison for the attempted murder charges. Aldrich also received a four-year sentence for bias-motivated charges, which are akin to hate-crime charges in other states. Prosecutors could not seek the death penalty because in 2020, Colorado abolished the death penalty – becoming the 22nd state to do so.

An Alabama man has pleaded guilty to shooting his pregnant wife twice in the head, killing her and their unborn son. Hunter James Tatum, 26, entered his plea to two counts of murder Wednesday morning in Autauga County. He was initially charged with capital murder and prosecutors were seeking the death penalty. Tatum’s plea came as his trial, which began last week, was wrapping up. Tatum’s wife, Summer, was five months pregnant with her first child – Everett. The deadly shooting happened on Oct. 18, 2021, in the bedroom of the couple’s on Sunset Court in Prattville.

Two soldiers were killed and a third wounded when a fellow recruit opened fire at a training range in central Japan on Wednesday, the military said. "During a live-bullet exercise as part of new personnel training, one Self-Defense Forces candidate fired at three personnel," the Ground Self-Defense Force (GSDF) said in a statement. "The death of another person has been confirmed of the three who were shot at," the GSDF added later, after earlier announcing a first death and two injuries. Earlier, government spokesman Hirokazu Matsuno said a suspect had been detained, but gave no further details.

BROOMFIELD, Colorado, April 21 (Reuters) - Colorado-based Biofire Tech is taking orders for a smart gun enabled by facial-recognition technology, the latest development in personalized weapons that can only be fired by verified users. But in a sign of the long, challenging road that smart guns have faced, a prototype twice failed to fire when demonstrated for Reuters this week. Company founder and Chief Executive Kai Kloepfer said the software and electronics have been fully tested, and the failure was related to the mechanical gun which was made from pre-production and prototype parts.

Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) called for an “automatic death penalty” for school shooters after a 28-year-old killed three children and three adults at a Christian elementary school in Nashville, Tenn.  “We need to consider an automatic death penalty for school shooters,” Scott posted to Twitter. “Life in prison is not enough for the deranged monsters who go into our schools to kill innocent kids & educators.” “Pray for all facing the unimaginable in Nashville. This is horrible & must stop,” he added. A shooter who police say surveilled The Covenant School and drew maps of the building in advance of the massacre blasted through the school’s locked glass doors on Monday, killing three nine-year-olds and three adults in their 60s. 

The 19-year-old gunman who killed a teacher and a 15-year-old girl at a St. Louis high school was armed with an AR-15-style rifle and what appeared to be more than 600 rounds of ammunition, Police Commissioner Michael Sack said Tuesday. Orlando Harris also left behind a hand-written note offering his explanation for the shooting Monday at Central Visual and Performing Arts High School. Tenth-grader Alexandria Bell and 61-year-old physical education teacher Jean Kuczka died and seven students were wounded. Sack read the gunman's note in which the young man lamented that he had no friends, no family, no girlfriend and a life of isolation. In the note, he called it the "perfect storm for a mass shooter." Sack said the gunman had some ammo strapped to his chest, some in a bag, and other magazines were found dumped in stairwells. The attack forced students to barricade doors and huddle in classroom corners, jump from windows and run out of the building to seek safety. One terr...

After the jury recommended a life sentence, there was a notion that the verdict will set a precedent of leniency that could help motivate future mass killers. An expert breaks down that claim. Fred Gutenberg, who lost his daughter Jamie in the shooting, was among those who believe that justice was not served on Oct. 13. RELATED |  How three jurors spared Parkland school shooter Nikolas Cruz the death penalty Instead of being executed by the state, Nikolas Cruz will die in prison while serving 17 consecutive life sentences.  At least one of the jurors decided to spare the shooter based on his history of mental illness. RELATED | Florida | Nikolas Cruz has avoided the death penalty. Here’s what’s next for him now RELATED | Florida | Spared execution, Nikolas Cruz faces dreadful, possibly violent life in prison “I think anyone planning a shooting right now sees that there's a path to avoid the death penalty,” Guttenberg told reporters immediately after the verdict. “Now you've ...

The court was packed, but you could have heard a pin drop in the moments leading up to verdict in the sentencing trial of the Parkland school gunman. It was the culmination of nearly five years of trauma, as jurors decided whether the gunman should spend the rest of his life in prison or be put to death. The panel of seven men and five women voted 17 times in all, once for each murdered victim. Each time, they spared Nikolas Cruz, 24, from death row. For victims' families, who had hoped the decision would resemble some form of reconciliation after the brutal attack, the decision has left them aghast. RELATED |  Deliberations over Parkland shooter sentencing verdict became ‘tense’ as jury struggled to make a unanimous decision, juror says "I'm disgusted with our legal system. I'm disgusted with those jurors," said Ilan Marc Alhadeff. His daughter Alyssa, 14, died in the attack along with 13 other children and three educators. A first-year student at Marjory Stonema...

Top Justice Dept. official visits to launch an anti-hate crime initiative as community weighs punishment for alleged Tops market shooter Months after his mother, Geraldine, and 9 other Black people died in a Buffalo grocery store at the hands of a White gunman, Mark Talley still wrestles with a question that haunts the victims’ families: What is the appropriate punishment for the perpetrator of such a heinous, racist crime? “Some days, I want him killed in the most painful way — take it back to Genghis Khan’s time, give him as much pain as possible,” Talley said in a telephone interview this week. But in other moments of reflection, Talley, who recently launched a nonprofit community organization called “Agents for Advocacy,” has another view: “I don’t want death. I want him to suffer in jail” for the rest of his life. Talley and others whose lives were upended after the mass shooting at the Tops supermarket in May have shared their views with senior Justice Department officials, who a...

MISSION, Kan. (AP) — Melissa Lee comforted her son and daughter after a student opened fire in their suburban Kansas City high school, wounding an administrator and a police officer stationed there. Then weeks later, she wept for the parents in Uvalde, Texas, who were forced to bury their children after the massacre there in May. She said she was “absolutely” reassured when she learned her district had since purchased one of the panic-alert systems gaining traction nationwide amid a surge in school violence that includes shootings and fights. The technology, featuring wearable panic buttons or mobile phone apps, enables teachers to notify each other and police in the event of an emergency. “Time is of the essence,” said Lee, whose son helped barricade a classroom door and watched police enter his school with guns drawn. “They can hit a button and, OK, we know something’s wrong, you know, really wrong. And then it puts everybody else on high alert.” Multiple states now mandate or encour...

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (AP) — The prosecution spent three weeks telling jurors how Nikolas Cruz murdered 14 students and three staff members at a Florida high school four years ago. Now his attorneys will get their chance to present why they believe he did it, hoping to get him sentenced to life without parole instead of death. Melisa McNeill, Cruz's lead public defender, is expected to give her opening statement Monday, having deferred its presentation from the start of the trial a month ago. She and her team will then begin laying out their 23-year-old client's life history: his birth mother's abuse of alcohol and cocaine during her pregnancy, leading to possible fetal alcohol syndrome; his severe mental and emotional problems; his alleged sexual abuse by a “trusted peer;” the bullying he endured; and his adoptive father's death when he was 5 and his adoptive mother's four months before his Feb. 14, 2018, attack at Parkland's Marjory Stoneman Douglas High Schoo...