Back to death row? Verdict on reopening of Japanese murder saga imminent

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The world's longest-serving death row inmate will learn from a Japanese court on Thursday whether he faces execution or will finally be acquitted, a decade after his murder conviction was overturned.

Iwao Hakamada, 88, was sentenced to 46 years' death penalty until he was released in 2014 pending a retrial.

The former boxer was first convicted in 1968 for the murder of his boss, his wife and their two teenage children.

But over the years, questions have arisen about fabricated evidence and coerced confessions, leading to critical scrutiny of Japan's justice system, which critics say holds suspects “hostage.”

“We have been fighting a battle for so long that it felt endless,” Hakamada's sister Hideko, 91, told reporters in July. “But this time I believe it will be decided.”

Prosecutors, meanwhile, said they remained convinced of his guilt “beyond reasonable doubt.”

Japan is, besides the United States, the only major industrial democracy that maintains the death penalty – a policy that enjoys broad public support.

Speaking to AFP in 2018, Hakamada stressed his ongoing fight for acquittal, saying it felt like he was “fighting a battle every day.”

“If you believe you can’t win, there is no way to win,” he said.

Although the Supreme Court upheld Hakamada's death sentence in 1980, his supporters fought for decades to have the case reopened.

A turning point came in 2014, when a retrial was ordered on the grounds that prosecutors may have falsified evidence, and Hakamada was released from prison.

Due to legal disputes, which included resistance from the public prosecutor's office, it took until last year for the retrial to begin.

Hakamada initially denied robbing and murdering the victims, but confessed after what he later described as a brutal police interrogation that included beatings.

At the heart of the trial is a set of blood-stained items of clothing that were found in a tank of miso – fermented soybean paste – a year after the murder and are used as evidence to incriminate Hakamada.

The defense argues that investigators likely staged the clothing because the red spots on it were too bright. However, the prosecution says its own experiments showed the color was believable.

Hakamada's supporters and human rights groups say his story shows Japan's flawed justice system and the cruelty of the death penalty.

In Japan, those sentenced to death are informed of their execution a few hours in advance.

The case is “just one of countless examples of Japan's so-called 'hostage justice system,'” Teppei Kasai, Asia program director at Human Rights Watch, told AFP.

“Suspects are forced to confess through long and arbitrary detention periods” and “intimidation during interrogations often occurs,” he said.