Japanese death row inmate Kaoru Kobayashi, who previously asked his lawyer to withdraw his appeal

Japanese death row inmate Kaoru Kobayashi, who previously asked his lawyer to withdraw his appeal, resulting in his sentence being finalised, requested that he be retried for the 2004 murder of a 7-year-old girl in Nara Prefecture, sources said. Kobayashi, 40, a former newspaper deliveryman, filed the request with the Nara District Court, the sources said, without indicating whether he planned to enter a different plea. He claimed he did not intend to kill the girl and that she accidently drowned in his bathtub after he drugged her. The court received the petition a day after Kobayashi mailed it from the Osaka Detention House, the sources said. The court will decide whether to retry Kobayashi after consulting with the Nara District Public Prosecutor's Office, they said. Kobayashi, who reportedly had earlier been convicted of molestation, was sentenced to hang for killing just one victim, which is a rarity.