An 88-year-old man believed to be the world’s longest-serving death row inmate was exonerated by a district court in Japan on Thursday, 44 years after he was first sentenced to death.
The man, Iwao Hakamada, was originally convicted of a quadruple murder in 1966 on the basis of what his defence lawyers say was a forced confession and fabricated evidence. Japan’s Supreme Court sentenced him to death in 1980. He was released a decade ago and granted a retrial that began last year.
Over the years, Hakamada, a former featherweight boxer, had consistently testified that he pleaded guilty only after police intensively interrogated him for 20 days, beating him with sticks and depriving him of sleep. He retracted his confession soon after making it.
“I feel relieved as he was ruled innocent,” said Hiroaki Murayama, a lawyer who as a judge in 2014 released Hakamada and ordered a retrial. “Why did it take so long?”
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Speaking in front of the court on Thursday, Hideyo Ogawa, a lawyer for Hakamada, said that the ruling was a “landmark decision” and that the court had clearly said Hakamada’s original conviction was based on fabricated evidence.
His acquittal was the fifth time a defendant sentenced to death row has been exonerated in Japan in the postwar period.
Hakamada’s lawyers had won a retrial and his release 10 years ago after testing showed that blood on clothing that police used as evidence didn’t contain his DNA.
After the Shizuoka District Court granted Hakamada a retrial in 2014, the Tokyo High Court reversed that decision, refusing to reopen the case. In 2020, the Supreme Court sided with the district court and ordered a new trial.
According to The Mainichi Shimbun, one of Japan’s main daily newspapers, Hakamada’s sister appeared at court hearings and testified that his mental condition was deteriorating.
Prosecutors now have to decide whether to appeal the Shizuoka court’s ruling.
Hakamada’s case has attracted the attention of international human rights activists.
“After enduring almost half a century of wrongful imprisonment and a further 10 years waiting for his retrial, this verdict is an important recognition of the profound injustice he endured for most of his life,” Boram Jang, Amnesty International’s East Asia researcher, said in a statement Thursday.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.