The Tokyo High Court on Tuesday upheld a life sentence handed to a man by a lower court over the 2017 murder of a 9-year-old Vietnamese girl, rejecting the defense's claim that DNA evidence was collected through illegal means.

The court rejected an appeal by Yasumasa Shibuya, the 49-year-old former head of a parents group at Mutsumi Daini Elementary School in the city of Matsudo, Chiba Prefecture, finding that evidence collected and used to convict him of the murder of Le Thi Nhat Linh, who was a third-grader at the school, was admissible.

Presiding Judge Masahiro Hiraki said investigators "illegally confiscated" the DNA evidence without a search warrant and criticized them for being "lazy."