Former doctor indicted for plotting to kill his father in 2011

KYOTO - A former doctor indicted for killing his father by conspiring with his mother and another physician in 2011 was handed 13 years in prison by the Kyoto District Court on February 7.

Naoki Yamamoto, 45, was charged with the murder of his father Yasushi, 77 at the time. According to the indictment, Yamamoto was accused of murdering his father on March 5, 2011 in an apartment in Tokyo or another location by conspiring with his 78-year-old mother Junko and 44-year-old doctor Yoshikazu Okubo.

Yasushi had just been released from a hospital in Nagano Prefecture after being treated for a mental illness. The prosecution had argued that Yamamoto and the other two killed Yasushi, who had been in and out of the hospital, by administering a chemical solution to him in order to get rid of him. The prosecution sought 20 years in prison for Yamamoto in the lay judge murder trial.

Yamamoto's defense team claimed he was innocent, as he planned to inject insulin in Yasushi to weaken him, but didn't go through with it after Junko asked him to not kill Yasushi. The defense stated that Okubo, who had a hostile attitude toward life-sustaining treatment for older people, acted alone, adding that the plan to kill Yasushi was halted and there was no conspiracy among the three.

Yamamoto and Okubo have been indicted for murder for hiring by giving a woman with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis ALS a lethal amount of drugs in 2019 after the woman asked them to kill her. The murder of Yamamoto's father was tried separately in the case in the year 2019 and the three defendants have also been put on trial separately.