Cheyenne Suarez

Japanese boxer wrongfully convicted of murder gets $1.4-M after 46 years in jail

Article (news)

Agence France-Presse

<div><span class="fr-img-caption fr-fic fr-dib" style="width:950px"><span class="fr-img-wrap"><img src="https://od2-image-api.abs-cbn.com/prod/editorImage/1742876142776Japanese.jpg" style="width:950px" class="fr-fic fr-dib" alt="Former Japanese professional boxer Iwao Hakamada (L), who was sentenced to death for the murder of four members of a family in 1966 and released in 2014, and his sister Hideko (R) leave after a press conference in Tokyo on November 25, 2019. Kazuhiro Nogi, AFP  "/><span class="fr-inner" style="text-align:left">Former Japanese professional boxer Iwao Hakamada (L), who was sentenced to death for the murder of four members of a family in 1966 and released in 2014, and his sister Hideko (R) leave after a press conference in Tokyo on November 25, 2019.<em> Kazuhiro Nogi, AFP  </em></span></span></span></div><div><br/></div><div><br/></div><p>TOKYO - A Japanese man wrongly convicted of murder who was the world&#x27;s longest-serving death row inmate has been awarded $1.4 million (approximately 80.2 million pesos) in compensation, an official said Tuesday.</p><div><a href="https://www.abs-cbn.com/world/2024/9/26/japan-court-acquits-longest-serving-death-row-prisoner-1354" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Japan court acquits longest-serving death row prisoner</a></div><p>The payout represents 12,500 yen ($83) for each day of the more than four decades that Iwao Hakamada spent in detention, most of it on death row when each day could have been his last.</p><p>The former boxer, now 89, was accused and found guilty of the murders of an executive, his wife and 2 children who were found stabbed to death in June 30, 1966.</p><p>He was granted a retrial and immediate release in March 2014 and then exonerated of the crime in 2024 when a court found there was reason to believe police had tampered with the evidence.</p><p>Hakamada initially denied having robbed and murdered the victims, but confessed following what he later described as a brutal police interrogation that included beatings.</p><p>Central to the trial was a set of blood-stained clothes found in a tank of miso -- fermented soybean paste -- a year after the 1966 murders, used as evidence to incriminate Hakamada.</p><p>The defense accused investigators of a set-up, as the red stains on the clothes were too bright, but prosecutors said their own experiments showed the color was credible.</p><p>The Shizuoka District Court, in a decision dated Monday, said that &quot;the claimant shall be granted 217,362,500,000 yen&quot;, a court spokesman told AFP.</p><p>Hakamada had suffered &quot;inhumane interrogations meant to force a statement (confession)&quot; that he later withdrew, the court said at the time.</p><p>The final amount is a record for compensation of this kind, local media said.</p><div><span class="fr-video fr-deletable fr-fvc fr-dvb fr-draggable" contenteditable="false" draggable="true"><iframe width="640" height="360" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/wYw1w9Y0Pj0?&amp;wmode=opaque&amp;rel=0" frameBorder="0" allowfullscreen="" class="fr-draggable"></iframe></span><br/></div><p>But Hakamada&#x27;s legal team has said the money falls short of the pain he suffered.</p><p>Decades of detention -- with the threat of execution constantly looming -- took a major toll on Hakamada&#x27;s mental health, his lawyers have said, describing him as &quot;living in a world of fantasy&quot;.</p><p>Hakamada was the fifth death row inmate granted a retrial in Japan&#x27;s post-war history. All four previous cases also resulted in exonerations.</p><div><em>hih/stu/pst</em></div><div><em>© Agence France-Presse</em></div>

<p>A Japanese man wrongly convicted of murder who was the world's longest-serving death row inmate has been awarded $1.4 million (approximately 80.2 million pesos) in compensation, an official said Tuesday.</p>

A Japanese man wrongly convicted of murder who was the world's longest-serving death row inmate has been awarded $1.4 million (approximately 80.2 million pesos) in compensation, an official said Tuesday.