OSAKA -- The Osaka District Court on Friday sentenced a 21-year-old man to nine years in jail for beating a girl to death after breaking into her home in 1996.

The defendant, a former vocational school student whose name has been withheld, was 18 years old when the crime occurred in Hirakata, Osaka Prefecture, in September 1996.

According to the court, the youth forced his way into the home of a woman with whom he had previously been associated and beat her 16-year-old sister to death with a metal baseball bat.

During the trial, the defendant denied intending to kill the girl, and his defense counsel argued that he had no motive to do so. Prosecutors had demanded a 12-year prison term.

In handing down the decision, Judge Takaaki Oshima declared that the defendant was obviously intent on murder because he repeatedly clobbered the victim. The judge added that the defendant might have harbored a grudge against his acquaintance's family or had mistaken the younger sister for her.

The defendant broke into the woman's home in Hirakata after shattering a glass door on the evening of Sept. 20, 1996, intending to retrieve a motorcycle helmet he had entrusted to the woman.

When the woman's sister, a high school student, heard the noises, he struck her in the head with the bat and then poured cooking oil over some bedding and set it ablaze in an attempt to hide his crime, the court was told.

The court was also told that the defendant entered the woman's house on June 28 the same year and stole 200,000 yen in cash.