A former assistant nurse convicted of murdering a patient in 2003 is expected to be found not guilty in a retrial, her lawyers said Wednesday, after prosecutors decided not to argue against her acquittal.
Mika Nishiyama, 39, was found guilty in 2005 of killing a 72-year-old man by removing his respirator at a hospital in Shiga Prefecture. Her conviction, based in part upon a confession she later retracted, was finalized in 2007, and she finished serving a 12-year prison term in 2017.
But the Supreme Court ordered her retrial in March, upholding a lower court's ruling that it was possible the patient had died from natural causes.