Photo/Illutration Tetsuya Yamagami leaves Nara-Nishi Police Station in Nara for a psychiatric examination on July 25. (Asahi Shimbun file photo)

A psychiatric evaluation of Tetsuya Yamagami, the suspect in the slaying of former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, started on July 25 to assess his mental condition to decide whether to indict him.

The Nara District Court on July 22 approved a request from the Nara District Public Prosecutors Office for the evaluation through Nov. 29. Yamagami, 41, was transferred to a hospital for the examination.

Doctors will evaluate his life history and check for the presence of any mental disorders.

Prosecutors will determine his mental fitness based on the results of the examination.

The mental state of Yamagami at the time of the attack, which occurred on July 8 in Nara as Abe was speaking on behalf of an Upper House candidate, is expected to be one of the points of dispute in a lay judge trial.

Prosecutors will use the results of the exam to determine if Yamagami is mentally competent to be indicted.

Tomoyuki Mizuno, a criminal law professor at Hosei University Law School who is a former judge, said, “It is hard to imagine that (the suspect) was mentally incompetent or in a diminished capacity,” citing that Yamagami carefully planned a crime, constructed and tested homemade guns and checked Abe’s campaign schedule.

Mizuno said he thinks the attack “was conducted in an extremely rational and organized manner with a strong obsessiveness.”

Yamagami told police that he has held a grudge toward the Unification Church and that was one of the motives behind the attack on Abe, who he believed had ties to it. 

But Mizuno said, “There is a gap” between Yamagami’s stated motive and the act of shooting Abe in public view.

Because Yamagami caused trouble at work recently and has struggled financially, “It is possible that he was in an unhinged state of mind.”

Mizuno said, “If a mental disorder likely caused by his background and family environment is found, it will affect a determination of the appropriate punishment. I assume prosecutors want to understand Yamagami’s capability of behavior control and judgment of what is right and wrong.”

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