The Supreme Court on Thursday upheld the death sentence for a former senior Aum Shinrikyo figure for his role in the 1989 murders of a Yokohama lawyer, the attorney's wife and infant son, and a cultist trying to defect.
Kazuaki Okazaki, 44, is the first of 13 Aum defendants sentenced to death by district or high courts to have their sentence finalized.
A major point of contention in Okazaki's case had been the fact that he had turned himself in would mitigate his sentence.