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| Ouchi In Photo From Nagoya University |
A court on Friday sentenced Maria Ouchi, a 21-year-old former Nagoya University
student to life in prison over the 2014 murder of an elderly woman and
attempts to kill a boy and girl while she was in senior high school.
In handing down the sentence as sought by prosecutors, the Nagoya
District Court said Ouchi was mentally competent given that she is
deemed to have acted on her own volition when she committed the crimes.
The defense had sought acquittal, claiming Ouchi's developmental and
bipolar disorders made her incapable of judging right and wrong as well
as controlling her behavior.
In seeking a life term, prosecutors claimed the symptoms of Ouchi having
bipolar disorder were not severe enough at the time of her actions,
while admitting she was suffering from mental and developmental
disorders.
The ruling found that the former student, whose name is being
withheld because she was a minor when she committed the crimes, murdered
Tomoko Mori, 77, with a hatchet at Ouchi's apartment in
Nagoya in December 2014.
The former student was also convicted of trying to kill a girl who
was a classmate in junior high school and a boy who was a classmate in
senior high school, sometime between May and July in 2015 in Sendai,
Miyagi Prefecture, by poisoning them with thallium.
“She committed the crimes because of self-centered motives,” said
Presiding Judge Koji Yamada. “The murder of the woman was cruel and a
cold-blooded act based on the strong intention to kill.”
Regarding the poisoning, the court acknowledged her intention, albeit
a weak one, to kill the boy and girl on the grounds she had recognized
the possibility that poisoning could kill them.
She was also found guilty of attempting to kill a resident in Sendai by setting fire to the person’s house.
In the trial by three professional judges and six citizen judges, the
defendant had said she wanted to watch a person die and to observe the
symptoms of poisoning.
“Even now I still get the urge to kill someone,” she said during a court session.
According to her statements, she began developing an interest in
people’s death when she was a fifth or sixth grader, drawing pictures of
guillotines and gallows almost every day.
In her junior high school days, she heard a story from her mother
about the serial murders committed by a 14-year-old boy in Kobe in 1997
and “realized that there is a means to kill someone,” she testified,
adding it was then that she started studying about horrifying murders
that had happened.
She said that people she had felt driven to kill ranged from her
sister and her mother, to a friend, a prosecutor and her lawyer.
Medication has calmed her desire to kill but she still feels the urge
once or twice a week.
When asked if she felt sorry for the victims or regretted her
conduct, she said, “I do have such feelings but I don’t know how” to
express them.
Three doctors who were involved in her mental evaluation provided
split opinions on whether she could be held responsible for her actions,
though all three determined she had a developmental disorder which made
it difficult for her to understand other people’s feelings, as well as
bipolar disorder.
The defense also called for her indictment to be dismissed on the
grounds the decision by a family court to send her case back to
prosecutors for possible indictment violated the principle of a law
protecting the rights of minors.
Chunichi
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