The Supreme Court has turned down a 76-year-old death row inmate's sixth appeal for a retrial in a 1961 wine-poisoning case in which five people were killed.
Lawyers for Masaru Okunishi responded to the rejection by immediately filing his seventh appeal for a retrial with the Nagoya High Court.
In the March 1961 incident, which took place in Nabari, Mie Prefecture, Okunishi's wife, his alleged girlfriend and three other women died and 12 others became ill after drinking wine laced with agricultural chemicals at a local community party in a public hall.