A Japanese man who spent nearly half a century on demise row has been discovered not responsible of a number of murders, in a carefully watched trial that has raised questions on Japan’s use of the demise penalty.
Iwao Hakamada, now 88, was sentenced to hold in 1968 after being discovered responsible of murdering his boss, his spouse and their two teenage kids, and setting fireplace to their house two years earlier.
The previous skilled boxer spent 46 years on demise row – believed to be the longest time spent on demise row of any prisoner worldwide – till he was freed in 2014 when new proof emerged and a retrial was ordered.
Hakamada has constantly protested his innocence and stated investigators pressured him to admit, whereas his attorneys alleged police had fabricated proof.
There was no speedy choice on whether or not prosecutors will attraction in opposition to the decision, which was reported by Kyodo information company and different Japanese media retailers. His defence attorneys have urged prosecutors to not problem the ruling.
His 91-year-old sister, Hideko, who has campaigned tirelessly on behalf of her brother, instructed reporters forward of Thursday’s verdict: “For therefore lengthy, we have now fought a battle that has felt countless. “However this time, I consider it is going to be settled.”
Prosecutors had once more demanded the demise penalty, however authorized consultants had urged he could be acquitted, pointing to 4 different retrials involving demise row inmates in postwar Japan that each one noticed their convictions overturned.
Hakamada, whose bodily and psychological well being deteriorated throughout his lengthy incarceration, was not current at Thursday’s ruling and has been represented by his sister through the retrial.
The result rested on the reliability of bloodstained garments that prosecutors stated Hakamada had been sporting on the time of the homicide, at a miso manufacturing unit in central Japan the place he was a live-in worker.
When it ordered a retrial in March 2023 after years of authorized wrangling, the Tokyo excessive court docket stated there was a powerful chance that the clothes had been planted in a tank of miso by investigators. Defence attorneys stated DNA checks on the garments proved the blood was not Hakamada’s.
The excessive court docket had initially determined to not reopen Hakamada’s case – a trigger célèbre for opponents of capital punishment – however reversed its choice after the supreme court docket ordered it to rethink in 2020.
A whole lot of individuals had queued exterior within the Shizuoka district court docket on Thursday within the hope of securing a seat within the public gallery, whereas supporters held up banners demanding Hakamada’s acquittal.
Hakamada initially denied robbing and fatally stabbing the victims, however confessed after what he later described as a brutal police interrogation that included bodily abuse.
Campaigners stated his ordeal had uncovered flaws in Japan’s felony justice system and the cruelty of capital punishment.
Dying row inmates in Japan – one in every of solely two G7 international locations together with the US that retains the demise penalty – are notified of their execution, by hanging, just some hours upfront and given no alternative to talk to their attorneys or households. Their last dialog is often with a Buddhist priest.
However the demise penalty has excessive ranges of public help. A 2019 ballot by the Japanese authorities discovered that 80% of respondents considered capital punishment as “unavoidable”, whereas simply 9% supported abolition.
Hakamada’s case is “simply one in every of numerous examples of Japan’s so-called ‘hostage justice’ system”, stated Teppei Kasai, Asia programme officer for Human Rights Watch. “Suspects are pressured to admit via lengthy and arbitrary intervals of detention” and there may be usually “intimidation throughout interrogations”.
With Agence France-Presse
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