Nearly 60 Years After Conviction, Longest-Serving Death Row Inmate Declared Innocent By Japan Court
Trending News: Iwao Hakamata, world's longest-serving death row inmate, has been acquitted in a 1966 quadruple murder case. The 88-year-old faces a mental decline and may not comprehend his acquittal.
Trending News: A court in Japan has acquitted a 88-year-old man, who had been on death row for nearly 60 years for the 1966 murder of a family, declaring him "innocent". It was a pair of blood-stained trousers and an allegedly forced confession that had resulted in the death sentence for Iwao Hakamata in 1968, media reports said.
According to Japan's public broadcaster NHK, Hakamata was the world’s longest-serving death row prisoner.
The Shizuoka District Court's ruling that Hakamata was wrongfully sentenced to death marks the end of a prolonged legal battle.
Judge Kunii Tsuneishi ruled the blood-splattered clothing found from a miso tank that helped convict Hakamata had been planted "long after the murders", a CNN report said, quoting NHK.
“The court cannot accept the fact that the blood stain would remain reddish if it had been soaked in miso for more than a year. The bloodstains were processed and hidden in the tank by the investigating authorities after a considerable period of time since the incident,” Tsuneishi was said quoted as saying as he said Hakamata could "not be considered the criminal".
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Who Was Iwao Hakamata And What Was The 1966 Crime?
Hakamata was a professional boxer who had retired in 1961 and started working at a soybean processing plant in Shizuoka Prefecture. He was a divorcée, and also took up a job at a bar. Five years later, Hakamata became the prime suspect when the family of his employer at the soybean processing plant was found dead. He was arrested on August 18, 1966.
The employer, his wife, and their teenage children were stabbed to death inside their home on June 30, 1966, and the assailants had set the house set on fire after committing the crime, according to a report in The Japan Times. The report also said around ¥80,000 in cash was found missing.
Hakamata was arrested after police found traces of blood and gasoline on his pyjamas. The blood was not his, according to the reports cited above.
During initial questioning, Hakamata had reportedly admitted to the charges but changed his plea later, alleging that the police had extracted a forced confession out of him.
A twist came in August 1967 when the police uncovered five pieces of blood-stained clothes from the miso tank. Hakamata had said the clothes were not his, but a three-judge Shizuoka District Court sentenced him to death in 1968 in a 2-1 decision.
According to the CNN report, the dissenting judge stepped down six months later because he was demoralised after failing to stop the sentencing.
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How Hakamata Became The Longest-Serving Death Row Prisoner
Hakamata had maintained his innocence from the very beginning.
When he challenged his sentencing in the Tokyo High Court, his lawyers questioned why the clothings — one of them reportedly "too small" for Hakamata — were not found immediately after the murders, Japan Times reported. The court, however, was not convinced, and finalised his death sentence in 1980. By then, 14 years had passed since his arrest.
In Japan, after a conviction is finalised, the only way the convict can be exonerated is a retrial, the bar for which is high. Quoting Japan's Ministry of Justice website, the CNN report said 99% of cases result in convictions in the country, and that retrials are rare. According to Kyodo News, this is only the fifth time in post-war Japan that a retrial has resulted in the acquittal of a convict who was awarded the death penalty.
Hakamata sought retrials twice, but the first request was denied at all levels — the district court, the high court, and the supreme court. But a breakthrough came in 2014, when the Shizuoka District Court gave a go-ahead to his second request as a DNA test on the blood found on the pyjamas were found to be no match to Hakamata or the deceased.
Hakamata, now 78, was allowed to be released because of his "fragile mental state", the CNN report said.
Prosecutors, however, appealed the 2014 decision, and the Tokyo High Court in 2018 denied the request for a retrial. In 2020, the Supreme Court of Japan sent back the case back to the high court for further deliberation.
The high court finally granted a retrial in March 2023.
The Shizuoka court started hearing the case in October last year.
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Hakamata 'Living In Own World', Acquittal Won't Register
“When the judge said the defendant was not guilty, it sounded divine to me,” Hideko, Hakamata’s 91-year-old sister, was quoted as saying in the CNN report.
She has been campaigning for her brother's innocence for all these years.
Hideyo Ogawa, Hakamata’s lawyer, said the ruling was “58 years was too long”, but “groundbreaking”.
Hakamata, however, is not in a sound mental state to enjoy the news of his acquittal. He is “living in his own world”, according to Hideko, who told CNN that Hakamata rarely speaks and has no interest in meeting other people. “We have not even discussed the trial with Iwao because of his inability to recognize reality.”
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