The world’s longest-serving death row inmate, acquitted in Japan, is considering filing a lawsuit with the government

TOKYO – A lawyer for the world’s longest-serving death row inmate, who was acquitted last week in a Japanese retrial for a 1966 quadruple murder, said Tuesday that the defense team is considering filing a lawsuit against the government over fabricating evidence that ruined lives. man and his mental health, 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 found that police and prosecutors cooperated in fabricating and planting evidence against him. The court found that he had been forced to plead guilty as a result of brutal, many hours of closed interrogation.

The acquittal made him the fifth death row inmate to be found not guilty in a postwar trial in Japan, where the conviction rate among prosecutors is more than 99% and retrials are extremely rare.

Hakamada was convicted of murder in 1966 for murdering an executive and three members of his family and setting fire to their home in central Japan. He was sentenced to death in 1968 but was not executed due to a lengthy appeals and retrial process in Japan’s notoriously slow criminal justice system.

According to Amnesty International, he spent more than 45 years on death row, making him the longest-serving death row inmate in the world.

Hakamada is entitled to compensation of up to about 200 million yen ($1.4 million) if prosecutors approve the ruling, making the acquittal final. His lawyer Hideyo Ogawa told reporters that the defense team was also considering filing a lawsuit against the government because investigators and police cooperated to fabricate evidence, even though they were well aware that doing so could send the man to the gallows and would be “totally inexcusable.” “

Ogawa also demanded that recording investigations be mandatory in the future.

Hakamada’s 91-year-old sister, Hideko Hakamada, said she was trying to explain the victory to her brother, but he was still not convinced that he was now a free man.

The sister, who had devoted almost half her life to fighting for her brother’s innocence, said that when she told him about the acquittal as soon as she returned home, he remained silent. The next morning she showed him newspaper articles about him.

“I told him, ‘See, it’s true, what you’ve been telling us has really come true,’ but he still seemed skeptical,” she said, citing his mental problems and deep suspicions stemming from his years of being held in solitary confinement for a crime. he was wrongly accused. “I will remind him of the acquittal every day until he can finally believe it.”

On Sunday, Hakamada, accompanied by his sister, joined cheering supporters at a gathering in Shizuoka near his hometown of Hamamatsu for a rare public appearance and even made a brief comment.

“I finally achieved complete and total victory. Thank you,” Hakamada said. His sister stated that it was a big surprise for him as she thought that if he could say thank you, that would be enough. He says she doesn’t think he’s completely convinced yet.

The Supreme Court rejected his first appeal for reconsideration only 27 years later. His second appeal for retrial was filed in 2008 by his sister, and the request was granted in 2014 when the court ruled there was evidence to show he had been wrongly accused.

The court did not consolidate his conviction, but released him from his solitary death row cell, allowing him to await his retrial at home because, due to his poor health and age, he was a low risk of flight. The case was pending in several courts until Thursday.

Since his release, he has seemed to be in his own imaginary world and “I never expected him to say something like that,” Hideko Hakamada said, referring to his Sunday remark. “I imagine he had to repeat that phrase in prison for 48 years so he could say it when he was acquitted one day.”

The case is not completely closed for them yet, as technically prosecutors can still appeal the decision, while his lawyers and human rights activists condemn the move and have started collecting petitions. It also sparked calls from law societies and advocacy groups to demand a review of the law to reduce obstacles to retrials.

Japan and the United States are the only two countries in the Group of Seven developed countries that retain the death penalty. In Japan, executions are carried out in secret, and prisoners are only informed of their fate in the morning when they are hanged.