Man gets 10 years for fatally scalding 3-year-old boy with hot water

Only 10 years, after his intended action resulting to death? It's better than Japan's suspended sentence.

Just 10 years???!!!...

Deserved the gallows..

Sadly in Japan, physical punishment of children is common. Studies have shown that physical punishment (smacking, shoving and pushing) has been linked to anxiety, depression, substance abuse and antisocial behaviours in adulthood. This need to be addressed and talk about in Japan.

The indifference to human life in this country shocks me.

I'm actually surprised he didn't get the weak seven year sentence one usually gets in Japan for killing your own children. Should've gotten fifty to life.

Torturing a 3 yr old to death and he gets only 10 yrs. These types of rulings go a long way to showing the value of children. I hope the prosecutors appeal this to get a longer sentence.

In japanese courts children don’t seem to be considered human. 10 years is a joke. What a shame!

But Sakaguchi deemed the evidence put forward by prosecutors about Matsubara's motive insufficient, establishing that it could not be said Matsubara was aware of the risk to the young child's life.

Unless this worthless animal was retarded or had severe mental impairment, of course he knew setting a temperature of 75 degrees could kill a toddler. The judge is incredibly out of touch. Sickening.

This scum will be free again in his early 30s, with time already served. The sentence is a disgrace. I hope and pray he dies in prison.

Rest in Peace poor innocent little Orito.

No one here knows his real intentions, he says it was not intentional. I will only add that, had he held his hand in the shower water before placing his son there, he would have been well aware that the water was too hot. But then this brings in to argument the temperature of the shower water, in my home the shower water is set at a regular temp and remains the same, always. So, one must ask, did this guy take showers in water temp at 75c....No, it cannot be done. Draw your own conclusions.

only 10? what a joke!

should be at least 10 years for every year the kid was alive.

double it for being a jackass too.

60 years, minimum

Unbelievable that the idiot gets only 10 years for killing a young child.

Something is seriously wrong with the sentencing.

For a young man like him 10 years maybe is enough to ruin his life

But I still think 10 years is way too lenient

We want something that would really make future offenders think twice before doing anything horrible

the Osaka District Court found his actions only amounted to bodily injury resulting in death, noting that he had not intended to kill 3-year-old Orito Niimura.

There are your real criminals there.

The Osaka District Court.

"he had NOT intended to kill....."

What else was expected for throwing hot water on a toddler?

Every moron making the decision in that court should also be sent away for ten years each for being incompetent.

Disgusting outcome as expected.

I sincerely hope the inmates take care of this guy.

I sincerely hope the inmates take care of this guy.

it does not happen in Japanese prisons

18 years recommended for this monster who boiled a three year old boy to death when the baby's mother was not home?

Reduced to ten 10 ?

For how loooooooooooooong was the baby in the hot shower?

And what did he do to the baby before he locked the baby in the hot shower?

One Hundred And Eighty 180 years is NOT enough for this monster.

Prisons are run on very strict disciplines. Prisoners can only talk to each other at set times of the day.

one_consciousnessToday 03:51 pm JST

Why was there water set high enough to scold?!

Isn't one of the first rules of having children in a home turning down the hot water (28°C–30°C).

Is that not a thing in Japan?

It is a thing in Japan, as in any society in the world. I think you are not understanding that this particular 25-year-old so-called man is not on the same morality level as 99.999% of humanity and the fact that the mother of the 3-year old "..*had consulted the local government in May of that year and alleged her boyfriend had been abusive to the child, but the city's consultation center concluded that the situation at the time did not warrant implementing protective measures.**" *seems to indicate that this IMHO murder had a penchant for torturing this little boy and in this particular case, torturing the boy to death. Seems that not only did the mother fail to protect her son, the city's consultation center did as well.

One_consciousness

what good would it do letting a psychopath out on the street? I can’t use the word person for such monster. I hope he suicides in jail.

The Wrong message to criminals and child abusers again and again, 10 years is a cake walk.

Too many people fail to understand that the punishment not only reflects the crime done but also the society that punishes the criminal.

Matsubara left him in a running shower with the temperature set as high as 75 C.

But Sakaguchi (established) that it could not be said Matsubara was aware of the risk to the young child's life.

This cretin was surely aware of the risk of leaving a little boy in 75C water.

There’s no justice for murdered children in this country.

餓死鬼Today 06:51 am JST

What did the guy think would happen? The boy would be fine and all potty trained after a 75 C shower?

Let's think of the points in his favor. Though he would have to be on the ignorant side of things for this to be true, but the temperature is less than 100 degrees, and it is not impossible for someone to be unaware that burns are possible at a mere 70-80 degrees - thinking it is merely "hot" rather than "scalding". The fact that skin damage that covers over half the body are more than what it can compensate for may also be news to him.

Larr FlintToday 08:20 am JST

10 years for boiling a 3yo kiddo in the bathtub is a joke.

He wasn't "boiled" - boiling is to raise the water temperature to 100 degrees, so it begins evaporating at a high speed. That's one reason he wasn't convicted of murder. The penalty he received is well within what is customary for Continental Law systems, though less than what a Common Law man is accustomed to.

SpeedToday 08:56 am JST

I'm actually surprised he didn't get the weak seven year sentence one usually gets in Japan for killing your own children. Should've gotten fifty to life.

There's no such thing as a "50-year" sentence in Japan. Once you are above 15 years or so, the jump is to "life".

@opheliajadefeldtToday 11:03 am JST

No one here knows his real intentions, he says it was not intentional.

Which means the onus is on the prosecutor to prove that intention beyond reasonable doubt.

I will only add that, had he held his hand in the shower water before placing his son there, he would have been well aware that the water was too hot.

It goes beyond that. He clearly intends to punish the child, so inflicting pain is purposive (a.k.a. direct intent). He probably also had indirect intent on inflicting a degree of injury. However, neither of these link to the thought that the water is hot enough to be fatal. If you beat someone with a stick, you directly intend to inflict pain and are indifferent to injury, but that doesn't mean you want or don't care for his life.

=

I end with a quote from Bohlander's Principles of German Criminal Law (German law forms the basis of much of Japanese law, especially criminal):

Another frequent scenario are those cases where D is about to be stopped at a police road checkpoint and, because he is either subject to an arrest warrant or has something else to hide, drives straight at the police man standing in the road; the latter can barely save himself by jumping into the roadside ditch. Moral indignation at such behaviour would make it easy to infer that D would have driven over P had he not managed to get out of the way, if necessary accepting a lethal result. However, the courts have gone the other way and argued that offenders in these situations rather bank on the reaction of the police men: they accept endangering them, but do not actually contemplate that they will be killed. Coupled with the generally accepted high psychological threshold for intentional homicide offences, the BGH has consistently tended to reject trial courts’ findings that D acted with conditional intent with respect to P’s death.

Though not entirely the same scenario, the point I want to make is that Continental Law courts tend to have high standards for proving intent for homicide.

Kazuaki ShimazakiJuly 15 10:04 pm JST

I think if you intend to inflict pain you better be damn well sure you know it isn't permanent harm. Also he should have his head examined thinking that torture is responsible child rearing. US juries would have no problem giving this guy involuntary manslaughter during the commission of a crime and the judge would have no problem escalating the punishment to the max due to the vulnerable victim.

“…locking people up is almost never the solution…”

it isn’t only about deterrence and rehabilitation. We need to feel that life is valued and that we live in a society that is fair and just. This makes society and life livable. A child’s life matters and we have taboos and laws that can’t be broken. We don’t accept it when they are broken. He tortured a child to death. If we live in a society where this is acceptable, what will be the consequences? This is about trusting that society is meaningful and has values we can rely on. This is about living with our neighbors and in our communities. I really don’t buy into the ideals of Japanese society, seeing how devalued human life is.