Japanese man who spent 46 years on death row acquitted of murder charges | Japan

A Japanese man who spent nearly half a century on death row has been found not guilty of multiple murders in a closely watched trial that raised questions about the use of the death penalty in Japan.

Iwao Hakamada, now 88, was sentenced to death by hanging in 1968 after being found guilty of murdering his boss, his wife and their two teenage children and setting fire to their house two years earlier.

The former professional boxer spent 46 years on death row – believed to be the longest time any inmate has spent on death row in the world – until he was released in 2014 when new evidence emerged and a retrial was ordered.

Hakamada has always maintained his innocence, saying investigators forced him to confess, while his lawyers claimed police fabricated evidence.

There was no immediate decision on whether prosecutors would appeal the verdict, Kyodo news agency and other Japanese media reported. His defense lawyers urged prosecutors not to challenge the verdict.

His 91-year-old sister Hideko, who fought tirelessly for her brother, told reporters before the verdict on Thursday: “We have been fighting a battle for so long that it felt endless. But this time I believe it will be decided.”

Prosecutors had again called for the death penalty, but legal experts expected him to be acquitted. They pointed to four other retrials of death row inmates in post-war Japan, all of which had been overturned.

Hakamada, whose physical and mental health deteriorated during his long detention, was absent from Thursday's sentencing and was represented at the retrial by his sister.

The murder conviction was based on the credibility of the bloodstained clothing that prosecutors said Hakamada was wearing at the time of the murder at a miso factory in central Japan, where he lived as an employee.

When the Tokyo High Court ordered a retrial in March 2023 after years of legal wrangling, it said there was a high probability that investigators had placed the clothes in a tank of miso. Defense lawyers said DNA tests on the clothes proved the blood did not come from Hakamada.

The Supreme Court had initially decided not to reopen the Hakamada case – a cause célèbre for opponents of the death penalty – but reversed its decision after the Supreme Court asked it to retry in 2020.

Hundreds of people lined up outside the Shizuoka District Court on Thursday, hoping to get a seat in the stands, while supporters held up banners calling for Hakamada's acquittal.

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

Activists said his ordeal exposed flaws in Japan's criminal justice system and the cruelty of the death penalty.

In Japan – one of only two G7 countries, along with the United States, that still has the death penalty – those sentenced to death are given only hours' notice of their hanging and are not given the opportunity to speak to their lawyers or family members. Their final interview is usually with a Buddhist priest.

But the death penalty enjoys widespread public support. A 2019 Japanese government survey found that 80 percent of respondents viewed the death penalty as “inevitable,” while only 9 percent supported its abolition.

Hakamada's case is “just one of countless examples of Japan's so-called 'hostage justice system,'” said Teppei Kasai, Asia program director for Human Rights Watch. “Suspects are coerced into confessing through long and arbitrary detention periods” and “intimidation during interrogation” is common.

With Agence France-Presse