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The Fukuoka High Court has turned down the appeal of a 43-year-old man who was sentenced to life in prison last October for the murder of his three children in 2021.
The high court upheld the ruling by the Fukuoka District Court against Ryoji Tanaka who was convicted of killing his nine-year-old son Daisho, three-year-old son Rento and two-year-old daughter Hina in 2021, Kyodo News reported.
Police discovered the body of Daisho in Tanaka’s apartment in Iizuka, Fukuoka Prefecture, on Feb 16, 2021, and the bodies of Rento and Hina a week later in a hotel room in Sakurajima, a mountainous island in Kagoshima Bay in Kagoshima Prefecture. The three children lived with their father in the apartment where Daisho’s body was found. Daiso had been dead for about a week before his body was found. An autopsy revealed he had died due to internal bleeding after being beaten.
Police traced Tanaka to the hotel where he and his other two children had been staying. When police forced their way into the hotel room, Tanaka jumped from the fourth floor to the ground, sustaining injuries to his torso. In the hotel room, police found the bodies of the two children, along with a suicide note. The children had been strangled to death.
Police found unused briquettes in a car rented by Tanaka who later told them that he had initially planned to commit a murder-suicide with the children in the vehicle.
In its appeal, Tanaka’s defense team argued that he was stressed out, as a single father, from looking after his three children, and worried about raising them.
© Japan Today
12 Comments
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Speed
Glad he was denied. He denied his kids of their lives.
Mark
For one he is lucky he was not sent to the gallows, Two he took the lives of 3 innocent children who trusted him all the way to their death.
How sick of his defense team to even consider an appeal. Most single parents are no different, raising your own kids is your responsibility and if you can't do it get help, any help counts.
purple_depressed_bacon
Is the man's defense team made up of clowns? Did they actually think this asinine train of thought would have even a leg to stand on? There are single parents all over and they make do. If they can't make do, they reach out for whatever help available. They don't resort to snuffing out the lives of three innocent children. The gall of him trying to appeal his life sentence; the courts should have let him swung instead.
John
He should have been given dead sentence. I also agree on appealing life sentence. Why feed him in jail.
stormcrow
Convicted of killing his 3 children?1 He's lucky he didn't hang.
browny1
As I have mentioned on here a number of times - it appears that when parents kill their children in Japan it's horrendous, but not portrayed as horrendous as when a "stranger" commits the murder.
When those entrusted with love and care why is sentencing always more lenient?
jinjapan
Usually if you kill 2 or more in Japan you hang. I wonder how he avoided the hangman?
Jonathan Prin
So if you are worried about something, just erase it.
Life is cheap in Japan, especially for children.
In a country where demography is dire, the law and judges don't care much about the sacred state that should be given to children, who represent the future.
Yubaru
And get his case tossed because of improper representation? Like the system or not, people have rights, even after conviction, and if they didnt press an appeal, that would be just as wrong.
It's sick to think that people shouldnt be given their rights, and just fed to the dogs.
starpunk
The nerve of this guy. He committed capital offenses and he appeals his life sentence. What about those three children who never really lived? Don't they matter?
Alex
This is enraging, that this loser thinks this is a valid excuse for murdering children - his own children! How many single parents are out there taking care of their kids without any help? (Especially single mothers, who often get beat up on by society for not having a partner?) All these parents still make-do and try to give their children the best lives they can. This guy didn't even have the decency to do that for his kids. Instead, he just took their lives away, completely. Here's someone who deserves the death sentence. Despicable.