Japanese court acquits former boxer in 1966 murder trial after decades on death row

By MARI YAMAGUCHI

TOKYO (AP) – A Japanese court on Thursday found an 88-year-old former boxer not guilty in a retrial for a 1966 quadruple murder, overturning an earlier wrongful conviction after decades on death row, Japanese broadcaster NHK reported.

Iwao Hakamada's acquittal by the Shizuoka District Court makes him the fifth death row inmate to be found not guilty in a retrial under Japan's postwar criminal law. The court's presiding judge, Koshi Kunii, said the court had acknowledged multiple falsifications of evidence and that Hakamada was not the perpetrator, NHK reported.

He was found guilty of murder for killing a company executive and three of his family members and setting fire to their house in central Japan in 1966. He was sentenced to death in 1968 but was not executed due to lengthy appeals and retrial.

It took 27 years for the Supreme Court to reject his first request for a retrial. His second request 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 that his conviction was based on fabricated charges by investigators, but he was not acquitted of the charge against him.

Hakamada had previously spent 48 years behind bars – most of them on death row – making him the oldest prisoner sentenced to death row in the world.