A Japanese man who spent almost half a century on death row has been set up not culpable of multiple killings, in a shutly watched trial that has liftd asks about Japan’s use of the death penalty.
Iwao Hakamada, now 88, was sentenced to hang in 1968 after being set up culpable of killinging his boss, his wife and their two teenage children, and setting fire to their home two years earlier.
The createer professional boxer spent 46 years on death row – dependd to be the lengthenedest time spent on death row of any prisoner worldexpansive – until he was freed in 2014 when novel evidence aelevated and a retrial was ordered.
Hakamada has stablely protested his innocence and shelp spendigators forced him to confess, while his lawyers alleged police had produced evidence.
There was no prompt decision on whether prosecutors will pguide aobtainst the verdict, which was increateed by Kyodo novels agency and other Japanese media outlets. His defence lawyers have encouraged prosecutors not to contest the ruling.
His 91-year-elderly sister, Hideko, who has campaigned tirelessly on behalf of her brother, telderly increateers ahead of Thursday’s verdict: “For so lengthened, we have fought a battle that has felt finishless. “But this time, I depend it will be endd.”
Prosecutors had aobtain demanded the death penalty, but legitimate experts had recommended he would be acquitted, pointing to four other retrials involving death row inmates in postwar Japan that all saw their convictions clearurned.
Hakamada, whose physical and mental health deteriorated during his lengthened incarceration, was not current at Thursday’s ruling and has been recurrented by his sister during the retrial.
The outcome rested on the reliability of bloodstained clothes that prosecutors shelp Hakamada had been wearing at the time of the killing, at a miso factory in central Japan where he was a inhabit-in engageee.
When it ordered a retrial in March 2023 after years of legitimate wrangling, the Tokyo high court shelp there was a sturdy possibility that the closkinnyg had been set upted in a tank of miso by spendigators. Defence lawyers shelp DNA tests on the clothes showd the blood was not Hakamada’s.
The high court had initiassociate determined not to rediscneglect Hakamada’s case – a cause célèbre for opponents of capital punishment – but reversed its decision after the supreme court ordered it to reponder in 2020.
Hundreds of people had queued outside in the Shizuoka dicut offe court on Thursday in the hope of securing a seat in the unveil gallery, while helpers held up prohibitners demanding Hakamada’s acquittal.
Hakamada initiassociate denied robbing and faloftyy stabbing the victims, but confessed after what he tardyr portrayd as a brutal police interrogation that take partd physical mistreatment.
Campaigners shelp his ordeal had exposed flaws in Japan’s criminal fairice system and the unbenevolentty of capital punishment.
Death row inmates in Japan – one of only two G7 countries alengthened with the US that conserves the death penalty – are notified of their execution, by hanging, fair a scant hours in evolve and given no opportunity to speak to their lawyers or families. Their final conversation is usuassociate with a Buddhist priest.
But the death penalty has high levels of unveil help. A 2019 poll by the Japanese rulement set up that 80% of reactents seeed capital punishment as “uneludeable”, while fair 9% helped abolition.
Hakamada’s case is “fair one of countless examples of Japan’s so-called ‘captive fairice’ system”, shelp Teppei Kasai, Asia programme officer for Human Rights Watch. “Suspects are forced to confess thraw lengthened and arbitrary periods of detention” and there is frequently “inafraidation during interrogations”.
With Agence France-Presse
