A high court on Wednesday upheld a lower court decision to retry an 84-year-old man who served prison time for fatally stabbing an acquaintance in Kumamoto Prefecture in 1985.
Rejecting an appeal by prosecutors, the Fukuoka High Court, presided over by Judge Masataka Yamaguchi, said that new evidence presented by the defense team "greatly eroded the credibility of confessions in the investigation process and raised reasonable doubts" over the conviction of Koki Miyata.
The high court ruling followed the Kumamoto District Court's decision in June last year that granted Miyata a retrial due to doubts over the credibility of his confessions.