The Tokyo High Court on Monday trimmed two years off the prison sentence of an 18-year-old youth convicted of stabbing his parents to death and causing an explosion at the family's Tokyo residence in 2005, acknowledging the boy suffered at the hands of an abusive father.
The case stirred debate when the Tokyo District Court last December handed the defendant a 14-year prison term, even though he was 15 at the time of the killings.
It was the first case in which an actual prison sentence was meted out to a defendant under 16, after the minimum punishable age was lowered from 16 to 14 via a revision of the Juvenile Law in April 2001.