Photo/Illutration Shoji Maekawa appears in Kanazawa on July 18, holding a hat belonging to Iwao Hakamata and wearing a tie given to him by Keiko Aoki, who were both acquitted of murder in retrials. (Shinnosuke Ito)

KANAZAWA--A man who served seven years in prison over stabbing death of a teenage girl was acquitted on July 18 in a retrial that battered the credibility of witness testimony.

The Kanazawa Branch of the Nagoya High Court found Shoji Maekawa, 60, not guilty of murder.

Maekawa was sentenced to prison after being convicted of murdering a junior high school girl in Fukui, the capital of Fukui Prefecture, in 1986.

Prosecutors at the time lacked any physical evidence tying Maekawa to the crime. Instead, their case focused on often-contradictory testimonies of six witnesses.

For the retrial, a judge instructed prosecutors to submit 287 new pieces of evidence, which clearly showed inconsistencies in the witness statements.

The 15-year-old junior high school girl was killed at her home in Fukui on the night of March 19, 1986.

About a year later, Maekawa was arrested and accused of fatally stabbing the girl with a kitchen knife.

He became a suspect after a male acquaintance told investigators he saw Maekawa covered in blood on the night of the attack against the girl.

Maekawa pleaded not guilty, saying he had never met the victim.

The Fukui District Court in 1990 acquitted him, ruling that the witness testimony was not credible.

For example, the court said the male acquaintance gave two or three different explanations of “the location of the bloody clothing.” In addition, no traces of the victim’s blood could be found in the car in which Maekawa was said to have ridden after the attack.

However, prosecutors appealed, and a higher court reversed the verdict, concluding that the statements made by the acquaintance and others were consistent with each other.

The Supreme Court finalized the sentence in 1997.

The defense team’s first request for a retrial was accepted, and it was scheduled to start in 2011. But the high court overturned the decision after the prosecution appealed.

The defense made a second request for a retrial in 2022.

The 287 new pieces of evidence revealed a series of contradictions in the prosecution’s claims.

Witnesses said they watched a TV program on the day when they saw Maekawa stained in blood. But the evidence shows the actual date when the program aired was off by a week.

In approving the retrial in October 2024, the Kanazawa Branch of the Nagoya High Court criticized investigative authorities in the case, saying it appears they induced witness testimony.

The branch said prosecutors had noticed the difference in the date of the broadcast at the first trial but continued to argue against this fact.

The court also noted that a police officer had given a wedding gift to one of the witnesses who had testified against Maekawa.

Disclosure of prosecution evidence has been a focal point in central government discussions on revising the retrial system.

The Japan Federation of Bar Associations has said the Maekawa case reaffirms the importance of the judges’ conduct concerning disclosure of evidence. The federation calls for revisions of the system and the law.

(This article was written by Chiaki Ogihara and Shintaro Shiiki.)