Fukuoka High Court Orders State and Prefecture to Pay 23 Million Yen to Family of Wrongfully Convicted Man

The case, known as the Matsubashi incident, stems from the 1985 murder of a man in Uki City (formerly Matsubashi Town), Kumamoto Prefecture. Following a retrial, the late defendant Hiroki Miyata was found not guilty. His family then filed a damages lawsuit against the state and Kumamoto Prefecture. The appellate ruling was handed down on July 27, 2026, by the Fukuoka High Court. Presiding Judge Ken Okada determined that the prefectural police investigation before the arrest "exceeded the limits of voluntary investigation for the purpose of obtaining a confession and must be deemed illegal," ordering the state and the prefecture to pay a combined total of approximately 23 million yen.

In March 2025, the Kumamoto District Court had ruled in the first instance that prosecutors failed to fulfill their duty of care during the criminal trial, but did not find the police investigation illegal, ordering only the state to pay the same amount. The high court overturned that decision and ordered the prefecture to bear joint liability for the payment. The first-instance ruling also noted that a shirt fragment wrapped around the murder weapon, which according to the confession had been burned after the crime, still existed, yet prosecutors continued the trial without presenting that evidence in court. Hiroki Miyata was sentenced to 13 years in prison in 1990 and served the term. A retrial was later granted due to doubts about the credibility of his confession, and he was acquitted in 2019. He died in 2020 after filing the lawsuit.