A government advisory panel held its first meeting Monday to review the country's retrial system, following the acquittal of Iwao Hakamata after decades on death row.

Members of a subcommittee under the Legislative Council agreed on the need for law revisions and decided to hear opinions from former prosecutors and judges, as well as lawyers who have handled past cases of convicts acquitted in retrials.

The subcommittee has 14 members, including lawyer Hiroaki Murayama, who, as presiding judge in 2014, led Shizuoka District Court's decision to hold a retrial of Hakamata, 89, over the 1966 murder of a family in Shizuoka Prefecture, central Japan.

Public calls for a review of the retrial system, which has not been revised since the country's criminal procedure law was established in 1948, have been growing since Hakamata's acquittal last year.

Under the current law, the retrial process and the criteria and procedures for disclosing evidence held by investigative agencies are not clarified, leading to criticism of the retrial system as "the door that never opens."

Some people have also argued that the decision to hold a retrial is left to the discretion of individual judges.

The subcommittee is expected to focus on issues including the disclosure of evidence during the process for starting a retrial. At the day's first meeting, Murayama said, "It has been proven that (disclosure of evidence) is crucial in proceedings for a retrial."