Lawyers for a 38-year-old Niigata man charged with kidnapping and confining a girl for nearly a decade said Tuesday that the defendant was in a weak mental state at the time of the kidnapping.
At the day's session before Niigata District Court, the defense council of Nobuyuki Sato maintained that their client had either schizophrenia or other mental defects that affected his ability to distinguish right from wrong when he kidnapped a 9-year-old girl in November 1990.
They made the argument in defense of their request for a mental examination of the defendant.
The girl was found and rescued in January nearly a decade after she was abducted on her way home from school in Sanjo, Niigata Prefecture.
It is believed that she was confined most of the time to the second-floor room of Sato's house in Kashiwazaki.
Prosecutors demanded the court to drop the request, saying the defendant possessed enough mental ability to be held criminally responsible.
They said Sato told the investigators that he was aware of the criminality of the act at the time of kidnapping and that he put a blanket on the girl to suppress her voice.
When questioned, Sato told the court that "I have visual and auditory hallucinations of people and insects, though I have been hiding it."
Prosecutors countered that his statement was obviously a lie, designed to avoid liability.
The court is expected to determine whether to conduct a mental exam of the defendant after questioning doctors, who conducted a simple exam on him, at the next session.
At the day's session, Sato also admitted shoplifting female clothing.
While it was made clear by Sato's statement to the investigators that his mother bought female sanitary products upon his request, Sato's mother claimed she was not aware of the girl's presence.