Construction of Defendant's Motive and Categorization of Victim in Court

A Case of Homeless Killing in Osaka's Dotonbori

Abstract

In this paper, based on court records of the incident of homeless killing in Osaka's Dotonbori (1995), we shall show how in court the construction of motives is related with the categorization of victim and how both support each other.
This case was regarded not as an usual murder but as'homeless killing'. In general the category homeless accompanies with two kinds of images :'poor and helpless'/'deviant'. The prosection and counsels tried to make effective use of this category. In some time they emphasized that the victim was a'poor and helpless'homeless and in other time stressed that he was a'deviant'.
Such categorization of a victim into a homeless helped the construction of the defendant's motives.As he had a inborn sickness and therefore was jobless, he was'poor and helpless'and'deviant'like homeless.He discovered himself or his future in homeless on the street. So he had a bad feeling to homeless and sometimes picked on them.The prosecution and counsels (and even the defendant himself) explained that everyday accumlation of these feeling and acts made motives in this case. In this way motives were constructed through categorization.