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40 years in prison awaiting death penalty, found innocent and receives $1.4 million in damages

2025-03-25 18:11:50Kosova&Bota SHKRUAR NGA REDAKSIA VOX
Iwao Hakamada

A Japanese man who spent more than 40 years on death row before being acquitted last year has been awarded $1.4 million in damages, a Japanese court confirmed on Tuesday. The compensation for Iwao Hakamada, 89, represents about $85 for each day of unjust punishment.

The former professional boxer was sentenced to death in 1968 for a quadruple murder, despite repeatedly claiming that police had fabricated evidence against him.

He was the longest-serving prisoner on death row in the world until a DNA test proved that bloodstained clothes used as evidence against him had been tampered with after the fact.

The Shizuoka District Court awarded compensation of 217 million Yen ($1.4 million), the largest amount ever awarded for an unjust conviction in Japan.

His lawyer, Hideyo Ogawa, called the amount insufficient to compensate for Hakamada's suffering.

Hakamada was arrested in 1966 after his boss, the boss's wife, and their two children were found stabbed to death in their home.

He initially pleaded guilty, but later changed his statement, saying that the police had forced him to confess through violence and threats.

Two of the three members of the jury found him guilty, while the judge who opposed the decision resigned from office six months later.

After more than 50 years in prison, including 40 years on death row, new evidence led to his release in 2014, and a retrial found him innocent last year. His case has sparked criticism of Japan's criminal justice system, where conviction rates run as high as 99%.

His sister, Hideko, said that decades in prison had caused him irreparable mental problems and that he lived "in his own world", unable to understand reality.


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