A Japanese man accused of knifing to death 19 disabled people at a care home in Tokyo will admit to the killings, according to reports.
Satoshi Uematsu, 29, is in detention awaiting trial for the July 2016 stabbings in Sagamihara, Kanagawa Prefecture, in one of Japan's worst-ever mass killings.
Uematsu was allegedly said "there was no reason for them to live" when arrested.
The trial is set to begin on January 8 and a verdict is expected on March 16.
During 26 interviews with the Mainichi Shimbun newspaper, beginning in March 2017, Uematsu said he would not dispute the accusations against him and would "admit" all in court.
Prosecutors win 99% of their criminal cases when they first go to trial, according to data from the Supreme Court in Japan.
Uematsu worked at the care facility and while he said he was "sorry to the bereaved families," he repeatedly said that the deaths "couldn't be helped," Mainichi reported.
"There was no reason for them to live," Uematsu said in an interview in February 2018, describing the residents at the care home as "people with failed minds."
"I had to do it for the sake of society," he said, according to the newspaper report.
He spoke about his potential court sentence, suggesting at one point he would like to avoid execution and at another time that he would prefer the death penalty.
"If I'm not capable of taking responsibility for myself, then I'd prefer the death penalty. I don't want the subject of my ability to take responsibility brought up at the trial," he was quoted as saying.
In April this year, Uematsu told Mainichi: "I didn't do anything that would warrant the death penalty."
And in July, he said a heavy sentence would be "unavoidable," but "execution would be too much. I have no intention of being sentenced to die."
Uematsu had said in letters he wrote in February 2016 that he could "obliterate 470 disabled people" and gave detailed plans of how he would do so, Kyodo news agency reported.
Uematsu was involuntarily committed to hospital after he expressed a "willingness to kill severely disabled people", an official in Sagamihara said.
He was freed on March 2, 2016, after a doctor deemed he had improved and was no longer a threat to himself or others, the official said.
The affair shocked a nation where the crime rate is low and such mass killings rare.
