56 years on death row: Japan acquits man wrongly convicted

In Japan, 88-year-old Iwao Hakamada, who spent more than half a century on death row awaiting execution, was acquitted. Of these, Hakamada spent 30 years in solitary confinement. The Japanese man was included in the Guinness Book of Records as the person who has been awaiting execution for the longest time. He is also the fifth lucky person in post-war Japan whose case was agreed to be reviewed.

Iwao Hakamada was born in 1936. He was involved in sports from an early age and became a professional boxer. In June 1966, 30-year-old Iwao saw his boss's house on fire and tried to put out the flames. Inside, he found the bodies of his boss, his wife, and two children. All had died from stab wounds.

Police suspicion fell on Khakamada. He was interrogated several times and taken into custody in August 1966. Traces of blood were found on his clothes, and the man himself later confessed to the murder. Another important piece of evidence against him was bloody clothing hidden in a vat of miso paste at a factory 14 km from the crime scene.

The investigation put forward a version that Iwao Hakamada entered the house, killed the family, and then changed clothes, hid the clothes and returned to put out the fire. Iwao agreed with this, but at the trial, unexpectedly for everyone, he retracted his testimony and stated that he had incriminated himself after being tortured by the police.

The man's lawyers insisted that it was impossible to kill four people with the fruit knife found on Iwao. It would have simply broken after the first blows. It was also obvious that the clothes found at the factory were too small for the suspect, who had an athletic build. The Japan Boxing Association even stood up for Hakamada. They said that boxers in the country are treated with bias.

The man was defended by several teams of lawyers, and hundreds of Japanese athletes organized protests and demanded a fair review of the case. But nothing helped, and on September 11, 1968, Iwao Hakamada was sentenced to death. Fortunately for the convicted person, in Japan, the execution of the sentence can take many years. And so it happened this time.

Iwao spent decades on death row in a terrible situation. It’s hard to imagine what it’s like to live every day that could be your last. It wasn’t until the early 2000s that Hakamada’s case began to fall apart. Experts conducted several DNA tests on the blood on his clothes and found that it didn’t belong to him.

In 2014, Iwao was even released, but the court immediately reversed this decision, suspecting that the results of the examination were fabricated. 78-year-old Khakamada was put behind bars again. The litigation lasted for many years, and only in March 2023 did a new trial begin. Now the court has finally found the 88-year-old man innocent, and he was released.

Now Iwao Hakamada, whose life was completely destroyed by a fabricated case almost 60 years ago, is a decrepit old man who is not oriented in the modern world and has mental disorders. He cannot live on his own, so he was taken in by his older sister Hideko, who is already 91 years old. She was the only person who always supported Iwao and played an important role in his fight for justice.