Photo/Illutration Shoji Maekawa speaks at a news conference after the Kanazawa branch of the Nagoya High Court on Oct. 23 granted him a retrial. (Tatsuo Kanai)

A man who served a seven-year prison sentence for the murder of a schoolgirl in 1986 in Fukui city is set for the retrial he has been seeking for 20 years. 

The Nagoya High Public Prosecutors Office decided on Oct. 28 not to file an objection to the Kanazawa branch of the Nagoya High Court approving a retrial for Shoji Maekawa, 59.

“After carefully examining the details of the ruling and comprehensively considering the evidence, we decided not to file an objection,” said Yoshihiko Hatanaka, the deputy prosecutor at the high public prosecutors office.

In its ruling on Oct. 23, the high court branch said that newly disclosed investigative documents from the prosecutors cast doubt on the witness testimonies from Maekawa’s acquaintances, which served as the basis for the guilty verdict against him.

The branch noted that the case originally had no physical evidence and characterized it as having a “fragile evidentiary structure.” It said that the newly disclosed materials constitute “clear new evidence that could justify a not guilty verdict," which is required to initiate a retrial.

The high court branch also pointed out that police had given wedding gifts to an acquaintance who testified, and that prosecutors had concealed objective evidence that contradicted the testimonies during the initial trial.

It described these actions as “betraying public trust in the duties of police officers, who are supposed to act with fairness” and as “a dishonest and deeply wrongful act for a prosecutor representing the public interest.”

Maekawa was arrested and indicted in 1987 over the murder of a 15-year-old girl, who was stabbed with a knife at a municipal housing complex in Fukui.

Although he was initially acquitted by the Fukui District Court in 1990, the Kanazawa branch of the high court overturned the ruling and found Maekawa guilty.

The branch only gave him a seven-year sentence for murder on the grounds he was in a weak mental state.

The Supreme Court finalized the sentence in 1997.

After Maekawa served the sentence and was released, he submitted his first request for a retrial in 2004. 

In 2011, the Kanazawa branch of the high court granted a retrial but later rescinded its order. In 2022, Maekawa filed a second request.

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