TOKYO — 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.
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 case could rekindle a debate around abolishing the death penalty in Japan.
The court's presiding judge, Koshi Kunii, said the court acknowledged multiple fabrications of evidence and that Hakamada was not the culprit, NHK said.
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 retrial process.
He spent 48 years behind bars — most of them on death row — making him the world's longest-serving death row inmate.
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. After his release, Hakamada served his sentence at home because his frail health and age made him a low risk for escape.
At a final hearing at the Shizuoka court in May before Thursday's decision, prosecutors again demanded the death penalty, triggering criticism from rights groups that prosecutors were trying to prolong the trial.
The extremely high hurdles for retrials have also prompted legal experts to call for a revision to the system.
During the investigation that followed his arrest, Hakamada initially denied the accusations, then confessed. He later said he was forced to confess under violent interrogation by police.
A major point of contention was five pieces of blood-stained clothing that investigators claimed Hakamada wore during the crime and hid in a tank of fermented soybean paste, or miso. The clothes were found more than a year after his arrest.
A Tokyo High Court ruling in 2023 acknowledged scientific experiments that clothing soaked in miso for more than a year turns too dark for bloodstains to be spotted, noting a possible fabrication by investigators.
Defense lawyers and earlier retrial decisions said the blood samples did not match Hakamada's DNA, and trousers that prosecutors submitted as evidence were too small for Hakamada and did not fit when he tried them on.
Japan and the United States are the only two countries in the Group of Seven advanced nations that retain capital punishment. A survey by the Japanese government showed an overwhelming majority of the public support executions.
Executions are carried out in secrecy in Japan and prisoners are not informed of their fate until the morning they are hanged. In 2007, Japan began disclosing the names of those executed and some details of their crimes, but disclosures are still limited.
Supporters say Hakamada's nearly half-century detention has taken a toll on his mental health. Most of his time behind bars was spent in solitary confinement, in fear of execution. He spent a total of 48 years in prison, more than 45 of them on death row.
His sister Hideko Hakamada has devoted around half of her life to win his innocence. Before Thursday's ruling, she said she was in a never-ending battle.
"It is so difficult to get a retrial started," she told reporters in Tokyo. "Not just Iwao, but I'm sure there are other people who have been wrongly accused and crying. … I want the criminal law revised so that retrials are more easily available."
Source: The Associated Press, Staff, September 26, 2024
Court acquits 88-year-old man in landmark 1966 quadruple murder retrial
SHIZUOKA — A Japanese court acquitted Thursday an 88-year-old former professional boxer in a high-profile retrial decades after he was sentenced to death over a 1966 quadruple murder case.
The retrial of Iwao Hakamada, who spent nearly half a century behind bars before new evidence led to his release from incarceration in 2014, started last October at the Shizuoka District Court, with prosecutors demanding the death penalty.
Hakamata's case marks the fifth time in postwar Japan that retrials have resulted in acquittals after the death penalty was given, with the four previous rulings finalized without an appeal by prosecutors.
The focus now shifts to whether prosecutors will appeal Thursday's ruling. The defense team has urged prosecutors not to challenge an acquittal.
It took more than nine years to reopen the case after the Shizuoka District Court granted him a retrial in 2014, as prosecutors filed an objection against the decision.
Hakamada's mental state deteriorated due to his long incarceration, with signs of psychological strain manifesting from around 1980, when his death sentence was finalized. His 91-year-old sister appeared in court hearings on behalf of her brother.
The focus of the retrial was the reliability of the main evidence -- five pieces of clothing he allegedly wore during the incident -- after the Tokyo High Court ruled in March last year in ordering the retrial that there was a strong possibility that they had been planted by investigators.
The high court in 2018 had initially decided not to reopen the case but it reversed course after the Supreme Court in 2020 ordered it to reexamine its ruling.
The former boxer was a live-in employee at a miso maker when he was arrested in 1966 for allegedly killing the firm's senior managing director, his wife and two of their children. They were found dead from stab wounds at their house in Shizuoka Prefecture, which had been burned down.
Indicted for murder, robbery and arson, his death sentence was finalized based on a ruling that blood marks on the five clothing items found in a miso tank 14 months after the murder matched the blood types of the victims and Hakamata.
He initially confessed to the killings during intense interrogation, but he pleaded not guilty at his trial.
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"One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed,
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted."
— Oscar Wilde
