Japanese man's acquittal of 1986 schoolgirl murder set to finalize
The Kanazawa branch of the Nagoya High Court acquitted 60-year-old Shoshi Maekawa over the murder of a teenage girl in Fukui, central Japan, in a retrial last month, dismissing the credibility of the testimony of his acquaintances that led to his initial guilty verdict.
The case is the latest high-profile acquittal in Japan following that of 89-year-old Iwao Hakamata who was exonerated last year over a 1966 quadruple murder in Shizuoka Prefecture.
Maekawa was accused of murdering the 15-year-old girl in March 1986, but had pleaded not guilty since his arrest in 1987. 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.
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