Last week the Nagasaki District Court sentenced 60-year-old gangster Tetsuya Shiroo to death for assassinating Nagasaki Mayor Itcho Ito during his election campaign. The death penalty is rarely handed down in cases involving a single murder, particularly when the defendant had no prior convictions for murder and the purpose of the crime was not to rob the victim. The court, however, considered this case to be special.

Although the gangster had a personal grudge against the mayor, the court nonetheless called the killing a "typical gun crime by a gangster possessing extremely vicious criminal intent against government authorities." It also said that the killing forever deprived the mayor of the freedom to engage in an election campaign and interrupted the citizens' right to vote. Thus it concluded that the crime "cannot be condoned in a democratic society."

According to the ruling, the gangster developed a grudge against the mayor because the city government refused to extend loans to a construction firm he was associated with or to pay compensation after his car was damaged at a road-construction site under the city's jurisdiction. On April 17, 2007, he shot the mayor twice near his campaign office.