"Deadly Nerve Gas on the Morning Commute: The Terrifying Cult Leader Who Sentenced Himself to the Gallows."

Criminal trial of Shoko Asahara (born Chizuo Matsumoto), founder and guru of the Aum Shinrikyo (オウム真理教) doomsday cult, which carried out the 20 March 1995 Tokyo subway sarin attack — releasing liquid sarin nerve agent on five rush-hour Tokyo Metro trains, killing 13 passengers and injuring approximately 5,800 — one of the worst chemical-weapons terrorist attacks in modern history. Asahara was also charged as mastermind of 12 other crimes: the 1994 Matsumoto sarin attack (8 killed), the 1989 murder of anti-Aum lawyer Tsutsumi Sakamoto and his wife and infant son, the 1995 VX murder of Tadahito Hamaguchi, the production of sarin and VX nerve agents, and multiple conspiracies to commit murder. His trial at the Tokyo District Court opened on 24 April 1996 and lasted nearly eight years over 257 hearings. On 27 February 2004, presiding judge Shoji Ogawa sentenced him to death by hanging. Throughout the proceedings Asahara remained largely mute, muttering incoherently, with many observers believing he was feigning mental illness; the court nonetheless found him competent to stand trial. His appeal to the Tokyo High Court was dismissed in March 2006 after his lawyers missed a filing deadline, and the Supreme Court denied a special appeal on 15 September 2006, finalizing the death sentence. Asahara was executed by hanging at the Tokyo Detention House on 6 July 2018, 23 years after the subway attack, along with six other senior Aum members the same day; the remaining six condemned Aum members were hanged on 26 July 2018. The case remains a seminal reference in debates over religious-cult regulation, terrorism prosecution, defendants' competency, and capital punishment in Japan.