The Tokyo High Court on Tuesday reduced a 75-year-old man's life prison term to 20 years for the murder of a woman last year.
Presiding Judge Yoshimasa Kawabe said it was wrong for the Chiba District Court to convict Kunimatsu Ihara of robbery and murder.
The high court said Tuesday that Ihara broke into his next-door neighbor's home on the morning of June 7, 2004, and stole 70,000 yen in cash and other items, including a bank card.
He thought he might have been seen, so he returned to the neighbor's house about 10 minutes later and murdered the woman's sister, 79-year-old Yasuko Nakagome. He later stole 550,000 yen with the bank card.
Judge Kawabe ruled that because the murder did not take place while the burglary was in progress, his crimes could not be deemed robbery-murder, as determined by the district court. They were a case of theft and a separate case of murder, the high court judge said in reducing the sentence.