In a retrial ordered by the Supreme Court, the Hiroshima High Court sentenced a 27-year-old man to death Tuesday for strangling and raping a 23-year-old woman, then strangling her 11-month-daughter in Hikari, Yamaguchi Prefecture, in 1999. The Juvenile Law prohibits sentencing to death anyone who was under the age of 18 at the time of the crime. The defendant was 18 years and one month old at the time he committed the two murders.

Tuesday's ruling suggests that the judiciary is departing from a 1983 Supreme Court guideline that regards the death sentence as something to be handed down only when doing so is deemed unavoidable in view of the gravity of the crime and from the standpoint of preventing further crime. It calls on courts to consider such factors as the nature and method of the crime, the motive for the crime, the number of victims, the age of the criminal, the sentiments of the victims' family members and the crime's social impact. Since the implementation of the 1983 guideline, no person under the age of 20 who has committed a double murder had been sentenced to death until Tuesday. The Hiroshima High Court ruling could pave the way for more death sentences to be imposed on 18- and 19-year-old minors.

In the two original trials of the Hikari case, life sentences were handed down primarily on the grounds that the defendant could be rehabilitated. The Supreme Court in June 2006, however, ordered a retrial, claiming that the reasons given for not sentencing the defendant to death were insufficient. It asked the high court to determine if there were special circumstances that justified a life sentence instead of a death sentence. In its ruling the high court sentenced the man to death after deciding that there were no extenuating circumstances and that the crime was coldblooded, cruel and inhuman.