The Tokyo High Court on Thursday began hearing appeals against a lower court ruling convicting a man of the murder of a 9-year-old Vietnamese girl in 2017, with prosecutors calling for the death sentence and the accused seeking acquittal.
Yasumasa Shibuya, the 48-year-old former head of a parents group at an elementary school in the city of Matsudo near Tokyo, pleaded not guilty at the first hearing of the appeal trial over the death of Le Thi Nhat Linh, who was a third-grader at the school.
In July last year, the Chiba District Court sentenced him to life in prison for abducting her in his vehicle, sexually assaulting her and strangling her before abandoning her body.
"If Linh were still alive, she would have been a sixth grader. She could have made various plans for her future," said Le Anh Hao, the girl's 37-year-old father before the start of the trial.
(Le Anh Hao)
He has collected signatures from 1.34 million people seeking the death penalty for Shibuya.
The girl at Mutsumi Daini Elementary School went missing on March 24, 2017, and was found dead near a drainage ditch in the city of Abiko two days later. Shibuya was arrested the following month.
The district court convicted Shibuya on the grounds that DNA matching his was found on the victim's body while the DNA of blood in his vehicle matched the girl's.
The defense had argued that the DNA evidence might have been forged or contaminated.
But the court did not sentence Shibuya to death as sought by prosecutors, saying the murder was not premeditated.
Both the prosecutors and the defense appealed the ruling.
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