The defense presented its closing arguments Friday in the Wakayama District Court insurance fraud trial of Kenji Hayashi, the husband of the accused in the 1998 Wakayama curry-poisoning murders.
Hayashi, 55, was indicted for defrauding insurance firms out of 160 million yen from May 1993 to December 1997 by filing false reports for "accidents" he and his wife, Masumi, 39, had staged. The court is scheduled to hand down its ruling on Hayashi on Oct. 20.
While Hayashi owned up to the charges in previous public hearings before the court, his lawyers sought a lenient ruling, saying the facts were not thoroughly analyzed.
His counsel argued that the fraud case, which only came to light during investigations into the curry-poisoning murders, is "basically unfair" since a doctor who faked a medical certificate and acquaintances who gave false alibis for his injuries were not indicted as well.
The lawyers also called into question the cooperation in investigations of such "conspirators." As for the insurance firms, the lawyers said they cannot be pitied because they were actually pressured by investigators to cooperate in probes into the poisonings.
Prosecutors have demanded an eight-year sentence for Hayashi saying that although his wife has previously admitted to masterminding the insurance fraud, Hayashi also played a leading role in it and his responsibility is "far from being light."
His wife, a former insurance saleswoman, is accused of murder and attempted murder for mixing arsenic in curry that was served at a community summer festival July 25, 1998, killing four people and leaving 63 ill. She is also charged with several counts of insurance fraud, including attempting to murder acquaintances, and her husband, for insurance.
The couple were arrested in October 1998 on suspicion of insurance fraud. She was later indicted in the poisonings.