A Japanese court ruled Thursday that an 88-year-old former boxer was not guilty in a retrial for a 1966 quadruple murder, reversing an earlier wrongful conviction after decades on death row, Japanese broadcaster NHK reported.
Iwao Hakamada’s acquittal by the Shizuoka District Court makes him the fifth death-row convict to be found not guilty in a retrial in postwar Japanese criminal justice. The court’s presiding judge, Koshi Kunii, said the court acknowledged a multiple fabrications of evidence and that Hakamada was not the culprit, NHK said.
He was convicted of murder in the 1966 killing of a company manager and three of his family members, and setting a fire to their central Japan home. He was sentenced to death in 1968, but was not executed due to lengthy appeals and the retrial process.
It took 27 years for the top court to deny his first appeal for retrial. His second appeal for a retrial was filed in 2008 by his sister Hideko Hakamada, now 91, and the court finally ruled in his favor in 2023, paving the way for the latest retrial that began in October.
Hakamada was released from prison in 2014 when a court ordered a retrial based on new evidence suggesting his conviction may have been based on fabricated accusations by investigators, but was not cleared of the conviction.
Well, he at least got 10+ years of semi freedom outside the prison, getting outside at 78 is way less bad than getting out at 88…
Some other points on this:
- On March 10, 2011, Guinness World Records certified Hakamada as the world’s longest-held death row inmate.
- A featherweight, he was ranked as high as sixth in his weight class.[6] He finished his career with a 16–11–2 record, including one win by TKO. All of his losses were on points.[4] After his boxing career, he worked at a Shizuoka-based miso manufacturer.[7]
- Hakamada was interrogated and, in August 1966, he was arrested based on his confession and a tiny amount of blood and gasoline found on a pair of pajamas he owned. According to his lawyers, Hakamada was interrogated a total of 264 hours, for as many as 16 hours a session, over 23 days to obtain the confession. They added that he was denied water or toilet breaks during the interrogation.
- At his trial, Hakamada retracted the confession, saying police had kicked and clubbed him to obtain it, and pleaded not guilty.[7][2]
“I could do nothing but crouch down on the floor trying to keep from defecating,” he later told his sister. “One of the interrogators put my thumb onto an ink pad, drew it to a written confession record and ordered me, ‘Write your name here!’ [while] shouting at me, kicking me and wrenching my arm.”[6]
Hakamada supporters said the case was full of holes, arguing that the alleged murder weapon – a fruit knife with a 12.19-centimetre (4.80 in) blade – could not have withstood the forty stabbings of the victims without sustaining significant damage, and that the pajamas used to justify the arrest had disappeared and been replaced with the bloody clothing.[8] The clothes were too small for Hakamada but the prosecution argued they had shrunk in the miso tank and the label had a “B” or medium size label on it which would have fitted Hakamada. However the B indicated the colour Black not the size.
Bro got indicted for wearing a size Bedium.