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Prosecutors in Yurihonjo, Akita Prefecture, have decided not to indict a 40-year-old unemployed woman over the murder of her 67-year-old mother at their home in January.
Sanae Otomo was arrested on Jan 16 after she admitted killing her mother Fusako the night before. Police had received a call from a man at around 10:30 p.m. on Jan 15 in which he said his mother was bleeding from stab wounds. Police and an ambulance went to the house and found Fusako dead in the living room. An autopsy revealed she had been stabbed multiple times.
Otomo lived with her son, 44, and Sanae. Although Sanae admitted killing her mother, she gave no motive.
Prosecutors decided to have her undergo a psychiatric examination to determine if she was mentally fit to stand trial, Sankei Shimbun reported. The evaluation was conducted from Jan 29 until May 10.
After getting the results, prosecutors announced they would not proceed with the indictment.
© Japan Today
30 Comments
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Darius
You brutally murdered your mother in cold blood but that's OK. Unbelievable.
Tom Doley
These familial murders shouldn’t be news anymore. Its all too common here in Japan.
willie_html
So she’s... free?
BertieWooster
So the result of the psychiatric examination was that it was OK that she killed her mother?
foreignbrotherhoodarmy
Another lunatic gets away with murder in japan
oldman_13
Fascinating reaction from the usual crowd above. Had the daughter mentioned that she killed her mother because the mother was suffering from dementia and could no longer care for herself, and this was causing tremendous stress for all, I bet the same people above would then be sympathizing with the murder.
Mark
Not sure but I guess I could research this, if a person admits to murdering someone, can he be ruled as being insane, or unfit to stand trial!?
Goodlucktoyou
It took about four months to evaluate, so I trust the doctors
Kiwikid
These prosecutors have an incredibly difficult job.
Under the table deals to protection their mates like finding ways to ensure 3 firefighters, who gang raped a drunk teenager, can walk off without charges.
Working hard at looking like their working hard. Protecting that beautiful 99 and Japan's other safety county statistics.
This woman isn't worth the extra work when a prosecutor only makes ¥19,099,706 before benefits.
sir_bentley28
So let me get this straight :
She brutally killed her mother with no motive
She wasn't seen as crazy by the shrinks
She was unemployed so we know she didn't pay off the judges
The judge saw no fault in this case and let her go?Oh.......makes sense! (WTH) (o.0')
Concerned Citizen
This just doesn't sound right. One of the purposes of the justice system is imprisonment of violent offenders to protect the public. Does this woman now have free interaction with the public or other patients in a mental health facility? The article doesn't tell us, but if so, what is to stop her from re-offending?
Harry_Gatto
Article doesn't say that, it says that the results of the examination, to check if she was mentally fit to stand trial, were given to the prosecutors who decided not to proceed, no reason given.
Which judges? There has been no court case.
Which judge? There has been no court case.
Sven Asai
Don’t complain already now, as we just don’t have enough information on this case, also here. It could be the son and she covers him by remaining silent and denying any statement , or she’s really mentally ill or both , the mother and her brother treated her bad for a long time and as he is too strong she went only for the mother and some other options, including a killer even outside of the family and putting the guilt on her etc. There is probably a bunch of more unpublished details, so that the prosecutor’s decision is based on more than we here know.
Aly Rustom
I guess, if they aren't even prosecuting them anymore....
ian
Probably not. The psych test was to determine if she was fit to stand trial.
Ai Wonder
In civilized countries insane people are considered unable to stand trial. Too many comments here are from the uninformed “flog ‘em and hang ‘em” brigade. Thankfully, we live in more enlightened times.
Zaphod
willie
I would assume mental hospital, which is probably worse than prison.
Mr Kipling
She was found to be mentally not fit for trial and hospitalized not set free.
Bob Fosse
Seems like a lot of speculation to me.
smithinjapan
Yeah, because, why would you? Just kill your mom, and no harm done. One less person to collect the drying up pension fund.
oldman_13: "Fascinating reaction from the usual crowd above."
You really have to stop pasting in this saved comment, especially when you jump onto a thread that barely has anyone commenting at all yet. Who's part of the "usual crowd" you mention? I recognize TWO posters before you. Honestly, if you're going to state your own opinion unchanged and far more speculative than anyone else's preceding yours, then fine, but don't assume it's going to be in contrast to something you've merely decided in your head, and then make up reasons why she did it when not only no motive is given, but no reason for dropping the charges.
Fact: The woman murdered her mother.
That's all we know, and we know it is against the law. We don't know why they chose to not follow it and let her go. People can comment on the facts without you jumping in and jumping down their throats. I have a feeling it's deflection because inside you know what she did is wrong.
William Bjornson
There are two major forms of mental incompetence, the deranged psyche and the psyche incapable of anything but preformed, mindless judgements. Neither is enviable and both about equally disabling in what these conditions do to their victims and to the people around them. The difference for the observer is that it is almost impossible to know the exact tortured perceptual world in which the deranged psyche may be living, but all too obvious the deranged worlds in which the terminally nonthinking spend their sad days in the small behavioral spaces which are their basic and simpleminded lives. Matricide, by my prejudices regarding Japan, would seem, above ALL OTHER BEHAVIORS, to be absolutely indisputable, prima facie evidence of SEVERE mental illness in a Japanese person. No questions necessary. Kaasan? NO! And we all have these prejudices. There are those who have yet to learn the surprises which ANY Human neural network can spontaneously produce to the surprise of both actor and audience and for whom the idea of 'mental illness' is beyond their understanding. As I said above, there are two forms of mental illness, the deranged psyche, and self-satisfied, judgemental ignorance. We can forgive this woman but should we, can we, forgive the other?
William Round
Someone should bear the responsibility of this, if the woman is deemed unfit for trial then any doctor that saw her and said it was fine to let her stay at home should be investigated.
Furan
I'm actually amazed at the lack of official information I can find about this while googling in Japanese. The last valid entry I have is from middle January, so I guess JapanToday has some alternative sources. I've even googled the Akita Prosecutors office, with no results on the case.
Chances are that the woman was deemed mentally unfit to stand trial and any further information falls into the "personal information" category and is thus not published. (as you do with children and mentally sick people)
So, we don't know whether she's actually free or not or what became of her after this. JT not reporting further probably means they don't know either.
This is actually the most likely scenario and ties perfectly into my theory of why there's no info floating around except for this article at this point in time.
In the comment section, we already got someone going ballistic.
Here, I present the ignorant people with Article 39 paragraph 1 of the Japanese penal code. Educate yourselves instead of making fools out of yourselves and attributing laziness/malice to Akita prosecutors despite them having done nothing wrong here.
People are mad when prosecutors prosecute, people are mad when they don't prosecute. How can one make it right for you?
ReynardFox
Yup. That’s exactly what happened. Definitely. 100%. Because that’s what court psychiatrists do. Determine if what someone did was ‘OK’. They definitely DON’T determine if the accused was of sound mind and capable of understanding the wrongness of their actions. That’s definitely NOT what happened. The shrink gave her a pat on the head and a cookie and said ‘she didn’t do anything wrong’.
ReynardFox
The lack of understanding of what ‘mentally unfit for trial’ means is staggering, so lemme spell it out.
There is a difference between being clinically insane and mentally unfit for trial. You can be the former without being the latter. Being found not guilty by reason of insanity or mentally unfit for trial means the person was so mentally disturbed or defective that they were incapable of telling right from wrong.
Thats NOT the same as being crazy. John Wayne Gacy was inarguably a mentally defective psychopath, but he was still capable of understanding that his actions were wrong and then chose to do them anyway. He was clinically insane, yet not mentally unfit for trial.
And mentally unfit for trial can include things like Alzheimer’s and dementia. While we can’t know the specifics of the psychiatrist’s decision, what we CAN surmise as that he found the woman to be incapable of discerning right from wrong. He didn’t declare her actions to not be wrong, he declared that she was unable to understand they were wrong.
A pillar of western law is that we do not punish those who are incapable of understanding WHY they are being punished. It’s why we don’t jail children. The same goes for the mentally unfit. If this idea isn’t amenable to you, there are plenty of third world countries that execute the mentally ill/handicapped that you can go live in.
B. Jay
why wont they indict her, Is she not fit to stand trial. I cany believe this.