Japan | Tokyo prosecutors decide not to appeal Iwao Hakamata retrial decision

A 1966 murder case, over which former pro-boxer Iwao Hakamata was sentenced to death, will be reopened after Tokyo prosecutors on Monday decided against appealing last week’s Tokyo High Court decision to order a retrial.

The case will now be sent to the Shizuoka District Court, with a high possibility that Hakamata will be exonerated.

The news triggered a wave of joy among his supporters, defense team and, most of all, his elder sister, who has been by Hakamata’s side since he was first arrested soon after the incident.

“I’m relieved,” said Hideko Hakamata, 90, in a news conference held by the defense team that she attended online. She said she told Iwao, 87, that he could have peace of mind since there will be a retrial.

Lawyer Katsuhiko Nishijima, who heads the defense team, said he will do his best to prove Hakamata’s innocence when the case reopens.

Hiroshi Yamamoto of the Tokyo Public Prosecutors Office said in a statement that although there were unacceptable points in the ruling, they did not have enough reasons to appeal.

In ordering the retrial, the Tokyo High Court said there was reasonable doubt that 5 pieces of clothing found in a miso barrel believed to be worn by the perpetrator — the key evidence in the case — had, in fact, been worn by the murderer.

The ruling said that bloodstains on the clothing should have changed color if they had been in the miso barrel for more than a year, which makes it unlikely that Hakamata placed them inside the barrel before he was arrested.

The ruling went on to point out the possibility that a third person other than Hakamata planted the clothing, with a “high likelihood that it might be one of the investigators.”

For the past week, Hakamata’s supporters had been rallying support in hopes that prosecutors would give up appealing the case. Nearly 40,000 people signed an online petition urging prosecutors not to appeal the retrial decision.

The Hakamata case has become a symbolic example of possible wrongful conviction. The Japan Federation of Bar Associations has offered support, saying the case lacks concrete evidence other than Hakamata’s initial confessions. According to the association, four death row cases have been changed to not guilty verdicts following a retrial.

The case is centered on the fatal stabbings of an executive of a miso-maker in Shizuoka Prefecture, his wife and their teenage children at their home before the house was set on fire on June 30, 1966. Some ¥80,000 in cash was also stolen from the home.

Police arrested Hakamata, who was an employee of the miso-maker, on Aug. 18 of that year, after investigators found traces of gasoline and blood that didn’t belong to him on his pajamas.

Despite his initial confession, Hakamata later recanted and pleaded not guilty in the first trial hearing in November 1966 and has since maintained that stance.

A new twist in the case came in August 1967, when investigators uncovered the 5 bloodstained clothes in a miso barrel.

Hakamata has claimed that the clothes were not his, but the Shizuoka District Court sentenced him to death in 1968. During the Tokyo High Court trial, lawyers questioned why the items of clothing, one of which was too small for Hakamata, were not found earlier, but the court rejected those claims and his death row sentence was finalized in 1980.

After his conviction, Hakamata twice sought retrials, with the first request denied by the local, high and supreme courts. But in 2014, the Shizuoka District Court greenlighted his second request — a major breakthrough in the case — allowing him to be released after nearly 50 years in detention and more than 30 years in prison on death row.

But what made the case more complicated was a subsequent split decision by higher courts. After prosecutors appealed the 2014 decision, the Tokyo High Court denied the retrial request in 2018, while the Supreme Court sent the case back to the high court for further deliberation in 2020.

Initially pronounced and written as Hakamada, the official spelling of his last name was changed to Hakamata in 2021 after a family request.

Source: japantimes.co.jp, Staff, March 20, 2023

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