Oshio sentenced to 30 months in prison

Former Japanese actor Manabu Oshio has been sentenced to 2 years and 6 months in prison for leaving unattended a woman companion who became gravely ill and died after taking an illegal drug with him.

The Tokyo District Court on Friday delivered the sentence without suspension. But the presiding judge said it is uncertain the victim may have lived even if Oshio had called an ambulance, thereby dismissing his responsibility for her death.

Prosecutors argued that the 32-year-old defendant failed to take proper action to resuscitate the 30-year-old woman after they took the illegal synthetic drug Ecstasy, or MDMA, at a condominium in central Tokyo last August.

Prosecutors had demanded 6 years in prison for Oshio, arguing that if he had called an ambulance, there would have been a more than 90-percent chance of the woman surviving.

Oshio's lawyers had put the possibility of the woman's survival at only 10 to 40 percent and argued that the defendant was innocent.