The Tokyo High Court sentenced a man to life in prison Friday for the 2005 murder of a girl in Tochigi Prefecture, retaining a lower court's punishment but repealing its ruling for excessive reliance on interrogation footage.
Takuya Katsumata, 36, who was arrested more than eight years after the body of 7-year-old Yuki Yoshida was found, initially admitted to murdering her but later retracted his statements. His lawyer immediately appealed Friday's ruling.
The first-grader was found dead in a mountain forest in Ibaraki Prefecture a day after she vanished on Dec. 1, 2005, while on her way home from elementary school in what was then the city of Imaichi.