Man's acquittal over 1986 murder of Fukui junior high school girl finalized
Prosecutors said they decided not to file an appeal against the Nagoya High Court's branch in Kanazawa, Ishikawa Prefecture, that handed down the ruling last month on Shoshi Maekawa.
"We are not thinking about apologizing (to Maekawa), but we take it seriously that he had been serving a sentence for a considerable amount of time," said Katsuhiko Hama, deputy chief prosecutor of the Nagoya High Public Prosecutor's Office, in a news conference.
Maekawa was previously found guilty of the crime and served a prison sentence of seven years.
Final appeals to the Supreme Court can be made only on grounds of constitutional violations or conflict with precedents. The prosecutors issued a statement saying they could not find any such reasoning to appeal.
In the latest ruling, the high court said that eyewitness testimonies, which had served as the grounds for the earlier guilty verdict, could not be relied upon because there was a possibility of investigative authorities having unfairly led witnesses to testify.
The prosecutors' statement said they took the criticism to heart and think they should learn from the case.
Throughout the years, Maekawa consistently denied the murder charge against him. His court battle centered on the credibility of the testimonies of his six acquaintances, including a statement by one of them that the person had seen Maekawa covered in bloodstains, as there was no direct evidence linking him to the crime.
The presiding judge said that investigation documents disclosed in the retrial showed that a television program one witness claimed to have watched on the night of the murder was broadcast on a different day. He criticized public prosecutors for failing to correct the error before the guilty ruling was handed down on Maekawa despite having known about it, saying, "There is no choice but to assume that the prosecutors attempted to hide inconvenient facts, and they are insincere and sinful."
Maekawa was arrested over the murder in 1987 — at the age of 21 — but the Fukui District Court found him not guilty of the crime. Subsequently, the Nagoya High Court's Kanazawa branch overturned the ruling and sentenced him to seven years in prison. The sentence was eventually finalized by the Supreme Court.
After serving his prison term, Maekawa sought a retrial, which was initially granted in 2011 but was then revoked by the Nagoya High Court. He filed for a retrial again in 2022, and the high court decided in October last year to proceed with it.
Translated by The Japan Times
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