the Supreme Court of Japan rejected the seventh request for retrial from Masaru Okunishi, an 87-year-old

the Supreme Court of Japan rejected the seventh request for retrial from Masaru Okunishi, an 87-year-old man on death row, who was convicted of murder and sentenced to death in 1969 based on a forced confession. Okunishi was charged in the 1961 killings of five women who drank wine laced with pesticides at a community party in the remote mountain village of Nabari in central Japan. Okunishi, who has spent more than 40 years facing execution and is one of the oldest death row prisoners in the world, had retracted his “confession” during the first trial and was acquitted due to lack of evidence. However, a higher court reversed the verdict and sentenced him to death. His latest retrial request was denied partly because the Supreme Court ruled that his initial "confession" still stood, even though he had retracted it.