The punishment of the Japanese who spent 45 years on death row decided to reconsider

On Monday, March 13, the Tokyo Supreme Court ordered a retrial in the case of a certainly unusual person. Iwao Hakamada was sentenced to death in 1968, but spent 45 years on death row, and the sentence was never carried out. Moreover, in 2014 he was even “temporarily released”, but he still lived with the prospect of a possible execution.

After nearly six decades, 10 judgments and more than 30 years on death row, the Tokyo High Court on Monday ordered a retrial against convicted murderer and former professional boxer Iwao Hakamada, The Japan Times reported. The Tokyo Supreme Court has ruled that 87-year-old Hakamada should be brought back to trial for past crimes. Campaigners called the decision “a step towards justice.”

“I have been waiting for this day for 57 years, and now it has come. Finally, the weight has been lifted off my shoulders,” said Hideka, Iwao’s 90-year-old sister, who campaigned to prove her brother’s innocence, enthusiastically after the court ruling.

Khakamada was convicted of the murders in 1968 and spent 45 years on death row before new evidence led to his release in 2014. In 2011, the man was even listed in the Guinness Book of Records as the person with the longest death sentence in the world.

By the way, Khakamada himself was born on March 10, 1936. After ending a fairly successful boxing career, he began working at a miso factory in his hometown. In 1966, he was arrested for the robbery and murder of the firm’s managing director, his wife, and two teenage children. According to investigators, the victims were stabbed to death and their house burned down. According to another version, everything was different: a fire broke out in the house of one of the company’s leaders, which Khakamada helped put out. After all the events, the bodies of the owner of the family, his wife and two children were found in the house. All had stab wounds. An important detail – the blood of an unknown person was found on the spot, and it was also discovered that money in the amount of about 200 thousand yen was stolen.

The former boxer initially confessed to the murders, but later recanted his testimony and maintained his own innocence throughout the two-year trial. As a result, the death sentence was finally pronounced in 1980.

Khakamada, who has been “temporarily released” since 2014 on humanitarian grounds, initially denied the allegations but later confessed to them, subsequently saying that police had threatened and assaulted him during 20 days of interrogation.

The Shizuoka District Court granted the retrial in 2014, saying investigators may have planted evidence after DNA tests showed blood found on several items of clothing did not belong to Hakamada.

However, four years later, the Tokyo High Court overturned that decision and the case went to the Supreme Court, which in 2020 ordered the high court to reconsider its opinion.

The story of Khakamada resonated so much in the souls of the Japanese that in 2019, sympathetic supporters of the convict decided to transfer this incredible story into a manga.

Commenting on the current decision of the Land of the Rising Sun’s judicial structures, Hideaki Nikagawa, director of Amnesty International Japan, said: “This decision provides a long-overdue chance to bring justice to Iwao Hakamada, who spent more than half a century on death row despite the blatantly unfair trial that resulted in he was convicted. Khakamada’s conviction was based on a forced “confession” and there are serious doubts about other evidence used against him. However, at the age of 87, he still has not been given the opportunity to challenge the verdict that has kept him under constant threat of the gallows for most of his life. Now that the Tokyo High Court has recognized Hakamada’s right to a fair trial, which he was denied over 50 years ago, it is imperative that prosecutors allow this to happen.”

In general, there are many oddities in the decisions of the local court, especially when the case is connected with the prospect of a death sentence. Japan, the only G7 country besides the US to retain the death penalty, has drawn international criticism for “secret” executions. Activists used the Khakamada case to accuse the Japanese authorities of driving prisoners insane and subjecting them to “cruel, inhuman and degrading” treatment.

Prisoners sentenced to the death penalty are only notified of the execution on the morning of the execution day, and their families are usually only informed after the execution has taken place. It is reported that Khakamada spent most of his painful imprisonment (and, it turns out, a significant part of his life) in solitary confinement on death row.

Anti-death penalty groups have welcomed the Supreme Court’s decision and said a retrial should take place while Khakamada, who is in poor health, can still take part in the hearings.

Incidentally, just recently, on February 27, the Osaka High Court upheld a lower court decision to allow a retrial of a man who died in prison after being convicted of murder on the basis of scattered evidence. As the Japanese newspaper The Asahi Shimbun reported, this is the first time in post-war Japan that the Supreme Court has allowed a retrial of a dead convict whose life or death sentence has been finally handed down.