Overview
- Osaka Detention House said staff discovered Kobayashi unresponsive in a single-occupancy cell during morning rounds and he was pronounced dead at a hospital around 8:40 a.m.
- Officials reported a bedding cover tied around his neck, and said the circumstances indicate he took his own life.
- Kobayashi, 41, had been on death row for the 2006 murders of two university students in Okayama, a case involving robbery and burying the victims alive.
- The Osaka District Court sentenced him to death in 2007, and the Supreme Court finalized the sentence in 2011.
- The facility expressed regret and promised stronger observation and assessment measures, while the nationwide count of inmates with finalized death sentences now stands at 103.