The world’s longest-serving death row inmate acquitted in Japan mulls suing the government
A lawyer for the world’s longest-serving death row inmate — who was acquitted in a retrial last week of a 1966 quadruple murder — says the defense team is considering filing a damages suit against the government for ruining the man’s life and his mental health by keeping him in prison for 48 years
TOKYO (AP) — A lawyer for the world’s longest-serving death row inmate — who was acquitted in a Japan ese retrial last week of a 1966 quadruple murder — said Tuesday that the defense team is considering filing a damage suit against the government over the fabrication of evidence that ruined the man’s life and his mental health by keeping him in prison for 48 years.
Iwao Hakamada, an 88-year-old former boxer, was found not guilty last Thursday by the Shizuoka District Court which concluded that police and prosecutors collaborated in fabricating and planting evidence against him. The court said he was forced into confession by violent, hours-long closed interrogations.
The acquittal made him the fifth death row inmate to be found not guilty in a retrial in postwar Japan, where prosecutors have a more than 99% conviction rate and retrials are extremely rare.
Hakamada was convicted of murder in the 1966 killing of an executive and three of his family members, and setting fire to their home in central Japan. He was sentenced to death in 1968 but was not executed, due to the lengthy appeal and retrial process in Japan’s notoriously slow-paced criminal justice system.
