Wrongfully Convicted Japanese Man Awarded $1.4 Million after 48 Years on Death Row

A Japanese man wrongly convicted of murder who was the world's longest-serving death row inmate has been awarded more than 217 million yen in compensation, an official said Tuesday.

The payout represents 12,500 yen for each day of the more than four decades that Iwao Hakamada spent in detention, most of it on death row when each day could have been his last.

It is a record for compensation of this kind, Japanese media said.

The former boxer, now 89, was exonerated last year of a 1966 quadruple murder after a tireless campaign by his sister and others.

The case sparked scrutiny of the justice system in Japan, where gaining a retrial is notoriously hard and death row inmates are often informed of their impending death just a few hours before they are hanged.

The Shizuoka District Court, in a decision dated Monday, said that "the claimant shall be granted 217,362,500 yen," a court spokesman told AFP.

The same court ruled in September that Hakamada was not guilty in a retrial and that police had tampered with evidence.

Hakamada had suffered "inhumane interrogations meant to force a statement (confession)" that he later withdrew, the court said at the time.

Hakamada's legal team said the money falls short of the pain he suffered between his 1966 arrest and his release in 2014, when he was granted a retrial.

The state has made mistakes that cannot be atoned for with 200 million yen.

"I think the fact that he will receive it... compensates him a little bit for all the hardship," lawyer Hideyo Ogawa told a press conference.

"But in light of the hardship and suffering of the past 47 or 48 years, and given his current situation, I think it shows that the state has made mistakes that cannot be atoned for with 200 million yen," he said.

Decades of detention -- with the threat of execution constantly looming -- took a major toll on Hakamada's mental health, his lawyers have said, describing him as "living in a world of fantasy".

Hakamada was convicted of robbing and killing his boss, the man's wife and their two teenage children.

He initially denied the charges but police said Hakamada eventually confessed. During his trial, Hakamada claimed innocence, saying that his confession was forced.

More than a year after the killings, investigators said they found blood-stained clothes -- a key piece of evidence that the court later said was planted by investigators.

Hakamada now lives with his sister with help from supporters.

Hakamada was the fifth death row inmate granted a retrial in Japan's postwar history. All four previous cases also resulted in exonerations.

Japan is the only major industrialised democracy other than the United States to retain capital punishment, a policy that has broad public support.

Japan's justice minister said in October that abolishing the death penalty would be "inappropriate" even after Hakamada's acquittal.

Source: Japan Today, Staff, March 25, 2025

"One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed,
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted."

— Oscar Wilde