A high court on Wednesday refused to grant a retrial to a man who served 17 years in prison for abducting and killing a 22-month-old boy near Nagoya in 2002.
While lawyers of Masaki Tanabe, 56, called for the case to be reopened, claiming his confessions during police questioning were not credible, the Nagoya High Court upheld its January 2019 decision to reject the request.
Tanabe was convicted of killing Sho Murase on July 28, 2002, by taking the boy out of his father's car at a parking lot in Toyokawa, Aichi Prefecture, and drowning him by hurling him into the sea from a nearby pier.