TOKYO: A Japanese man wrongly convicted of murder who was the world’s longest-serving death row inmate has been awarded $1.4 million in compensation, an official said Tuesday.<\/p>\n
The payout represents 12,500 yen ($83) for each day of the more than four decades that Iwao Hakamada spent in detention, most of it on death row when each day could have been his last.<\/p>\n
It is a record for compensation of this kind, Japanese media said.<\/p>\n
The former boxer, now 89, was exonerated last year of a 1966 quadruple murder after a tireless campaign by his sister and others.<\/p>\n
The case sparked scrutiny of the justice system in Japan, where gaining a retrial is notoriously hard and death row inmates are often informed of their impending death just a few hours before they are hanged.<\/p>\n
The Shizuoka District Court, in a decision dated Monday, said that “the claimant shall be granted 217,362,500 yen ($1.44 million),” a court spokesman told AFP.<\/p>\n
The same court ruled in September that Hakamada was not guilty in a retrial and that police had tampered with evidence.<\/p>\n
Hakamada had suffered “inhumane interrogations meant to force a statement (confession)” that he later withdrew, the court said at the time.<\/p>\n
Hakamada’s legal team said the money falls short of the pain he suffered between his 1966 arrest and his release in 2014 when he was granted a retrial.<\/p>\n
“I think the fact that he will receive it… compensates him a little bit for all the hardship,” lawyer Hideyo Ogawa told a press conference.<\/p>\n
“But in light of the hardship and suffering of the past 47 or 48 years, and given his current situation, I think it shows that the state has made mistakes that cannot be atoned for with 200 million yen,” he said.<\/p>\n
Decades of detention — with the threat of execution constantly looming — took a major toll on Hakamada’s mental health, his lawyers have said, describing him as “living in a world of fantasy”.<\/p>\n
Hakamada was convicted of robbing and killing his boss, the man’s wife, and their two teenage children.<\/p>\n
He initially denied the charges but police said Hakamada eventually confessed.<\/p>\n
During his trial, Hakamada claimed innocence, saying that his confession was forced.<\/p>\n
More than a year after the killings, investigators said they found blood-stained clothes — a key piece of evidence that the court later said was planted by investigators.<\/p>\n
Hakamada now lives with his sister with help from supporters.<\/p>\n
Hakamada was the fifth death row inmate granted a retrial in Japan’s post-war history. All four previous cases also resulted in exonerations.<\/p>\n
Japan is the only major industrialised democracy other than the United States to retain capital punishment, a policy that has broad public support.<\/p>\n
Japan’s justice minister said in October that abolishing the death penalty would be “inappropriate” even after Hakamada’s acquittal.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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