A Japanese court has acquitted Iwao Hakamada, an 88-year-old former boxer, of a 1966 quadruple murder. The decision makes him the fifth death-row convict to be found not guilty in a retrial in postwar Japanese criminal justice.
Hakamada 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 slow-paced criminal justice system.
Hakamada spent 48 years behind bars, more than 45 of them on death row, making him the world’s longest-serving death row inmate. Amnesty International‘s Boram Jang said the agency was “overjoyed by the court’s decision to exonerate Iwao Hakamada,”
“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“, he said.
Hakamada kept insisting he was innocent. In a letter to his mother while on trial in 1967 he wrote, “I have nothing to do with the case … I am innocent.”
During days of solitary confinement, he wrote to his family, “When I go to sleep in a soundless solitary cell every night, I sometimes cannot help cursing God. I have not done anything wrong. What a cold-blooded act to give me such cruelty. We don’t need such a God. I’m tempted to shout this to God.“
The case could rekindle a debate about abolishing the death penalty in Japan. The Shizuoka District Court acknowledged multiple fabrications of evidence and that Hakamada was not the culprit. Hakamada’s lawyer, Ogawa, praised the ruling as “groundbreaking” for clearly stating that the prosecution fabricated key evidence at the beginning.
Japan and the United States are the only two countries in the Group of Seven advanced nations that retain capital punishment. Executions are carried out in secrecy in Japan, and prisoners are not informed of their fate until the morning they are to be hanged.
As of December 2023, 107 out of the 115 people on death row had their death sentences finalized, and those on death row continued to be held in solitary confinement.
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