2024-09-26 07:12:01
TOKYO (AP) — A Japanese court on Thursday found an 88-year-old former boxer not guilty in a retrial of a 1966 quadruple murder, overturning a wrongful conviction that had kept him locked up for decades.
Hakamada Iwao was acquitted at the Shizuoka District Court, making him the fifth death row inmate in postwar Japan to be acquitted in a retrial. The case is likely to reignite debate over Japan’s abolition of the death penalty.
According to NHK, the presiding judge Koshi Kunii said that the court admitted that several pieces of evidence were fabricated and that Hakamada should not be charged.
Hakamada was convicted of killing a business manager and three of his relatives in 1966 and setting fire to their house in central Japan. He was sentenced to death in 1968, but was not executed due to the lengthy appeals and retrial process.
He spent 48 years in prison, most of which was on death row, making him the longest-serving inmate on death row.
It took the High Court 27 years to reject his first request for a retrial. The second lawsuit was filed in 2008 by his sister Hideko Hakamada, now 91, and the court eventually ruled in his favor in 2023, paving the way for a retrial to begin in October.
Hakamada was released from prison in 2014, but he was not acquitted after a court ordered a retrial based on new evidence that the conviction may have been based on charges fabricated by investigators. After his release, Hakamada served his sentence at home because his age and fragile health posed a low flight risk.
Prosecutors again sought the death penalty at the last hearing in a Shizuoka court in May before Thursday’s decision, prompting criticism from rights groups that prosecutors were trying to prolong the trial.
The huge obstacles to seeking a new trial have also led legal experts to call for institutional reform.
During the investigation after his arrest, Hakamada initially denied the accusations and later confessed. He later said police forced him to confess during violent interrogations.
A major point of contention is the five blood-stained pieces of clothing that investigators say Hakamada wore during the crimes and were hidden in a vat of fermented soybean paste, or miso. The clothes were discovered more than a year after his arrest.
A 2023 ruling by the Tokyo High Court accepted scientific evidence that clothes soaked in miso for more than a year were too dark to identify blood stains, suggesting possible forgery by researchers.
Defense attorneys and pre-retrial rulings showed that the blood sample did not match Hakamada’s DNA and that the pants presented as evidence by prosecutors were too small for Hakamada and did not fit him when he tried them on.
Japan and the United States are the only two countries among the Group of Seven most developed economies that still retain the death penalty. A Japanese government poll showed overwhelming support for the execution.
In Japan, executions are conducted in private, and prisoners are not informed of their fate until the morning they are hanged. The country began publishing the names of those executed and some of their crimes in 2007, but information remains limited.
Hakamada’s defenders say nearly half a century of incarceration has taken a toll on his mental health. He spent much of his time in prison in solitary confinement and fear of execution. He spent a total of 48 years in prison, more than 45 of which were on death row.
His sister Hideko Hakamada dedicated about half her life to proving his innocence. Ahead of Thursday’s ruling, he said he was in a never-ending battle.
“It’s very difficult to start a new trial,” he told reporters in Tokyo. “It’s not just Iwao, I’m sure there are others who have been unfairly charged and are crying… I want the criminal system to be reviewed to make it easier to get retrials.”
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