Photo/Illutration Kudo-kai leader Satoru Nomura, left, and Fumio Tanoue, his second-in-command, at the Fukuoka High Court on March 12 (The Asahi Shimbun)

FUKUOKA—The Fukuoka High Court commuted a death sentence for a yakuza gang leader to life imprisonment after acquitting him of a murder charge but holding him guilty in three attempted murders.

The court on March 12 ruled that Satoru Nomura, the 77-year-old head of the Kudo-kai organized crime syndicate, was not guilty of murder in the fatal shooting of a former fisheries cooperative chief in 1998.

“We reverse the original decision because it cannot be endorsed in light of the rules of logic and experience,” Presiding Judge Futoshi Ichikawa said.

However, Ichikawa said Nomura was guilty of involvement in three other attacks against ordinary citizens.

Ichikawa also rejected an appeal by Fumio Tanoue, 67, Nomura’s second-in-command, who has been sentenced to life imprisonment over the same attacks.

After a prefectural ordinance banned doing business with crime syndicates in 2010, business owners refused to pay “protection fees” to the Kudo-kai.

That prompted the Kudo-kai, based in Kita-Kyushu, to carry out violent attacks against those business owners and other ordinary citizens over the years.

The gang is the only group listed as a “special-designated dangerous crime organization” under the anti-organized crime law.

In the three attempted murder cases, a former police officer was shot in Kita-Kyushu in 2012; a nurse was stabbed in Fukuoka in 2013; and a dentist was stabbed in Kita-Kyushu in 2014.

Nomura and Tanoue were charged with organized attempted murder in these cases.

Although there was no direct evidence tying them to the four attacks, the Fukuoka District Court in 2021 ruled that the two were in a superior position in “the regimented organization of a crime syndicate” that enabled them to order gangsters to commit the crimes.

The court said it “could be presumed” that they were involved in the attacks.

The two defendants categorically denied their involvement at the district court.

But Tanoue admitted to his role in the two stabbing cases at the high court.

He said he ordered his subordinates to carry out the attacks on his own authority and emphasized that Nomura had nothing to do with them.

Nomura continued to deny his involvement at the high court.

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