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Iwao Hakamada, 89, who is believed to have been the world’s longest-serving death row inmate, was exonerated last year of a 1966 murder conviction.
By Yan Zhuang
A Japanese court awarded $1.4 million to a man who spent 44 years on death row for a murder conviction that was later overturned, the country’s national broadcaster said.
A district court in Shizuoka, a city west of Tokyo on Japan’s main island, ordered the government to pay Iwao Hakamada 217 million yen on Monday. Mr. Hakamada, 89, spent 44 years on death row after being convicted of murder for the deaths of four people in 1966.
His defense lawyers argued that the police forced a confession and fabricated evidence, earning him a retrial last year that led to his acquittal. He is believed to have been the world’s longest-serving death row inmate.
The payout, likely the largest in Japan’s history for a criminal case, was compensation for the 47-plus years that Mr. Hakamada spent in detention, according to NHK, Japan’s national broadcaster.
It represents roughly $83 for each day he was detained.
Over the years, Mr. Hakamada, a former featherweight boxer, had consistently testified that he pleaded guilty only after the police interrogated him for 20 days, beating him with sticks and depriving him of sleep. He retracted his confession soon after making it.
Japan’s Supreme Court sentenced him to death in 1980. In 2014, Mr. Hakamada’s lawyers won a retrial and his release after testing showed that blood on clothing that the police had used as evidence didn’t contain his DNA.
After the Shizuoka District Court granted Mr. Hakamada a retrial in 2014, the Tokyo High Court reversed the decision and refused to reopen the case. In 2020, the Supreme Court sided with the district court and ordered a new trial, which ended with his acquittal in September.
On Tuesday morning, Hideyo Ogawa, one of Mr. Hakamada’s lawyers, told reporters that the payout would only somewhat make up for the hardships he had suffered.
“The country committed a crime against him” Mr. Ogawa said.
Hisako Ueno contributed reporting.
Yan Zhuang is a Times reporter in Seoul who covers breaking news. More about Yan Zhuang
