Trial and Execution
The trial began on March 30, 1990. Often talking nonsensically, he blamed his atrocities on "Rat Man", an alter ego who Miyazaki claimed forced him to kill; he spent a great deal of the trial drawing "Rat Man" in cartoon form. Believed to be insane, Miyazaki remained incarcerated throughout the 1990s while Saitama Prefecture put him through a battery of psychiatric evaluations. Teams of psychiatrists from Tokyo University diagnosed him as suffering from dissociative identity disorder (multiple personalities). However, the Tokyo District Court judged him still aware of the gravity and consequences of his crimes and therefore accountable. He was sentenced to death on April 14, 1997. His death sentence was upheld by both the Tokyo High Court, on June 28, 2001, and the Supreme Court of Justice on January 17, 2006.
He described his serial murders as an "act of benevolence" and never apologized. Child killer Kaoru Kobayashi described himself as "the next Tsutomu Miyazaki or Mamoru Takuma." However, Miyazaki claimed that "I won't allow him to call himself 'the second Tsutomu Miyazaki' when he hasn't even undergone a psychiatric examination."
Kunio Hatoyama signed his death warrant and Miyazaki was hanged on June 17, 2008. Although the unusual swiftness of his execution as well as its timing soon after the Akihabara massacre prompted questions regarding the two incidents, the Ministry of Justice had no comment. Ryuzo Saki said, "His trial was long" and that he was "not willing to criticize Hatoyama."
Read more about this topic: Tsutomu Miyazaki
Famous quotes containing the words trial and, trial and/or execution:
“Every political system is an accumulation of habits, customs, prejudices, and principles that have survived a long process of trial and error and of ceaseless response to changing circumstances. If the system works well on the whole, it is a lucky accident—the luckiest, indeed, that can befall a society.”
—Edward C. Banfield (b. 1916)
“You don’t want a general houseworker, do you? Or a traveling companion, quiet, refined, speaks fluent French entirely in the present tense? Or an assistant billiard-maker? Or a private librarian? Or a lady car-washer? Because if you do, I should appreciate your giving me a trial at the job. Any minute now, I am going to become one of the Great Unemployed. I am about to leave literature flat on its face. I don’t want to review books any more. It cuts in too much on my reading.”
—Dorothy Parker (1893–1967)
“It is clear that in a monarchy, where he who commands the exceution of the laws generally thinks himself above them, there is less need of virtue than in a popular government, where the person entrusted with the execution of the laws is sensible of his being subject to their direction.”
—Charles Louis de Secondat Montesquieu (1689–1755)