Japan court acquits man of 1986 schoolgirl murder in retrial
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KANAZAWA - A man who served seven years in prison after being found guilty of the 1986 murder of a junior high school student was acquitted on July 18 at the conclusion of a retrial.
The Kanazawa branch of the Nagoya High Court ordered the retrial after finding testimony given by Mr Shoshi Maekawa’s acquaintance in the original trial lacking in credibility.
The now 60-year-old Maekawa has maintained his innocence since his arrest in 1987.
In the retrial that began in March, prosecutors argued Mr Maekawa’s guilt but were unable to present any new evidence to add to the circumstantial evidence under which he was originally convicted.
The court’s focus during the retrial was the credibility of testimony that led to Mr Maekawa’s conviction in 1995, particularly a witness statement from an acquaintance who claimed to have seen him wearing blood-stained clothes.
The man’s statement claimed he was watching television on the day of the murder when he was asked by a third person to go to meet Mr Maekawa. However, it was later determined that what the man said he was watching at the time was not on the broadcast schedule.
In ordering the retrial in October 2024, the Kanazawa branch said it suspected police had influenced the man and Mr Maekawa’s other acquaintances to testify in line with claims that implicated Mr Maekawa in the murder, given the investigation had stalled at the time.
It also pointed out that prosecutors had continued to argue Mr Maekawa’s guilt, even while acknowledging the major factual inconsistency in the testimony.
Mr Maekawa was accused of murdering the 15-year-old girl at her home in Fukui Prefecture in March 1986.
The Fukui District Court acquitted him in 1990, but the Kanazawa branch overturned the decision and found him guilty in 1995, a ruling that was later finalised. KYODO NEWS
