Prosecutors made a rare, but not face-to-face, apology Wednesday to a 62-year-old man freed last week from prison after being convicted of the 1990 murder of a 4-year-old girl in Ashikaga, Tochigi Prefecture, for which they now believe, based on a DNA retest, he did not commit.
“We are very sorry for indicting someone who is unlikely to have been the culprit and making him serve time in prison as a result,” Tetsuo Ito, deputy chief of the Supreme Public Prosecutor’s Office, said in a press conference.
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