Japanese court rejects appeal, life sentence for kid’s killer Nhat Linh

According to Yahoo News, Shibuya’s defense lawyer in the appeal said that the Chiba Prefectural Police Department investigator illegally obtained evidence when he took a cigarette butt from the defendant’s apartment to collect DNA without without a search warrant or consent of the defendant.

However, Judge Takuya Fukayama and four other judges all agreed that the appeal from Shibuya’s defense lawyer was groundless and upheld the life sentence.

Previously, at the first-instance trial on July 6, 2018, the Chief Justice of the Chiba Prefectural Court sentenced Shibuya to life in prison for the murder of baby Nhat Linh. The basis for this judgment is that the DNA sample found on the victim’s body matched Shibuya’s DNA, and the DNA from the bloodstain on the defendant’s car also matched the victim’s DNA.

At that time, Nhat Linh’s relatives did not agree with the sentence and demanded a stricter sentence for the accused. However, the prosecutor’s office rejected this appeal.

On March 23, 2021, the Tokyo Court of Appeals also upheld the life sentence for Shibuya, after rejecting the defendant’s defense lawyer’s argument that it was necessary to remove the DNA evidence used. used to convict the subject because they were obtained “illegally”. The presiding judge of the trial at that time affirmed that this was not so serious that the test results had to be removed from the basis of the accusation.

Defendant Shibuya, 49, was arrested in 2017 on suspicion of murdering little Le Thi Nhat Linh. The 9-year-old girl went missing on March 24, 2017, while on her way to Mutsumi Daini Elementary School in Matsudo City, Chiba Prefecture. Two days later, the authorities found Nhat Linh’s body in a ditch about 10 km from her house.

The case has shaken the Vietnamese community in Japan and Vietnamese in the country. What made the public angry was that the killer Shibuya was the president of the parent association at the school the victim attended.

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