Japan acquits Iwao Hakamada after a retrial overturns a decades-old murder conviction
A Japanese court has acquitted Iwao Hakamada, the 88-year-old who spent almost half a century on death row, after concluding that the evidence underpinning his conviction had been fabricated. The ruling ends one of Japan's most closely watched legal sagas and brings a formal acquittal to a man once described as the world's longest-serving death row inmate.
Hakamada was originally convicted in 1968 of killing his boss, the man's wife and their two teenage children, as well as committing arson. The case dated back to 1966, when he was working at a miso processing plant and the bodies were found after a fire at the family's home in Shizuoka, west of Tokyo. Prosecutors said Hakamada had killed the family, stolen cash and set the house ablaze. He always denied the crime, later saying his confession had been coerced through beatings and long interrogations.
The retrial turned on the clothes found in a tank of miso a year after his arrest. Those garments were presented as bloody evidence linking him to the murders. Defense lawyers argued for years that the DNA on the clothing did not match Hakamada's and that the items may have been planted or otherwise tampered with. The court's verdict validated that challenge, with the report saying the evidence had been fabricated by investigators.
The toll of the case on Hakamada was severe. He spent decades in detention, much of it in solitary confinement and under the threat of execution. By the time the retrial was finally heard, he was considered too mentally unwell to attend. His sister Hideko, who had campaigned for decades to clear his name, has been caring for him since his release in 2014, when he was granted a retrial and freed from jail.
Supporters crowded the Shizuoka courtroom and reacted with cheers when the verdict was announced, reflecting the long public interest in a case that has become symbolic of doubts over Japan's capital punishment system. Retrials for death row prisoners are rare in Japan; Hakamada's was only the fifth in the postwar era. That rarity made the ruling especially significant, both for his family and for critics who say the system leaves too little room for correcting wrongful convictions.
The acquittal does not erase what happened over the preceding decades, but it does formally overturn the conviction that defined Hakamada's life. For his sister and supporters, the verdict is the outcome they pursued for years. For Japan's justice system, it is a stark reminder that a case can remain contested for generations before the courts finally close it.
