Japan | Court acquits man in retrial of 1986 schoolgirl's murder

A man who served seven years in prison after being found guilty of the 1986 murder of a junior high school student was acquitted Friday at the conclusion of a retrial.

The Kanazawa branch of the Nagoya High Court ordered the retrial after finding testimony given by Shoshi Maekawa's acquaintance in the original trial lacked credibility. The now 60-year-old Maekawa had maintained his innocence since his arrest in 1987.

In the retrial that began in March, prosecutors argued 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 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 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 last October, the Kanazawa branch said it suspected police had influenced the man and Maekawa's other acquaintances to testify in line with claims that implicated Maekawa in the murder, given the investigation had stalled at the time.

It also pointed out prosecutors had continued to argue Maekawa's guilt even while acknowledging the major factual inconsistency in the testimony.

Evidence newly disclosed by the prosecution played a decisive role in the latest ruling. This is likely to influence discussions on the retrial system, including setting rules for evidence disclosure.

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 finalized.

The Kanazawa branch decided in 2011 to reopen the case, but the decision was overturned by the Nagoya High Court in 2013 following an objection by prosecutors. His last retrial request was filed in 2022.

In the country, since the end of World War II, at least 21 individuals in 19 cases, including Maekawa, have been acquitted for murder in retrials.

Source: Japan Today, Staff, July 18, 2025

"One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed,
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted."

— Oscar Wilde

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