Japan's retrial system will be scrutinized by legal experts for possible revision, officials said Friday, following last year's acquittal of the world's longest-serving death row prisoner.

Critics of the retrial law say the system does not offer sufficient safeguards to victims of wrongful convictions because it involves an arduous process that can take decades.

The system — so time-consuming that campaigners call it the "door that never opens" — has not been changed since the current Code of Criminal Procedure took effect in 1949.