Japan. The longest-serving death row inmate acquitted, nearly 60 years after sentencing – Observer

A Japanese court on Thursday acquitted Iwao Hakamada, who spent 47 years on death row, in a new murder trial after the first trial was overturned.

Hakamada, 88, was sentenced to death in 1968 for the murder of a family and remained in prison until 2014, when the court overturned the sentence due to doubts about the veracity of the evidence and ordered a new trial, something very unusual in the Asian country.

The new sentence, announced by Judge Koshi Kunii of the Shizuoka Court (southwest of Tokyo), recognizes that there was “falsification of evidence”, for which Hakamada was incriminated by the prosecution and the authorities in charge of investigating the case.

Considered the defendant who spent the longest time on death row in the world, the former professional boxer born in Shizuoka in 1936, he was convicted of the murder, in 1966, of the owner of the factory where he worked, his wife and their two children, and then setting fire to the house.

Shizuoka court agrees to retry Hakamada after he insisted that the evidence incriminating him had been fabricated against him.

The verdict marks the fifth time in post-war Japan that a death row inmate has been acquitted. after a new trial. The last court decision of the same kind had been made 35 years ago.

With his mental state weakened after almost half a century behind bars, the former boxer will receive compensation to be determined based on the years he has served in prison, provided that there is no appeal by the prosecution. The new verdict can be appealed within two weeks of the announcement.