World’s longest death row inmate given 3p for every minute he spent in prison
A Japanese man who spent 46 years on death row was awarded roughly 3p for every minute he spent locked up after being acquitted.
Iwao Hakamada, now 89, was convicted in 1968 of stabbing and killing his boss, the man’s wife and their two children.
He was exonerated last year of the quadruple murder after a campaign by his sister and others, becoming the longest-serving death row inmate in the world.
The former professional boxer was acquitted after a DNA test proved that the bloodstained clothing which was used as evidence to convict him was in fact planted after the attacks, according to Japanese public broadcaster NHK.
He had also accused authorities of carrying out ‘inhumane interrogations’meant to force a confession out of him.
Hakamada has since been compensated more than 217 million yen, which amounts to £1.1 million.
One of his lawyers, Ogawa Hideyo, confirmed to reporters on Tuesday that this is the largest payout ever handed out for a wrongful conviction in the country.
He said the money might help ease Hakamada’s suffering somewhat, but stressed that Japan had made a mistake that not even such an amount of money could compensate for.
‘I think the statehas made a mistake that cannot be atoned for with 200 million yen,’ NHK cited the lawyer as saying.
Hideyo had previously said that the decades of detention, mostly in solitary confinement, had affected his client’s mental health.
After Hakamada’s release, his lawyer said it sometimes seems like he ‘lives in a world of fantasy’.
What does the case say about Japan's retrial system?
Hakamada might still be behind bars if not for Hiroaki Murayama, the judge who in 2014 dared do something extremely rare in Japan’s often intractable legal system – he ordered a retrial.
Prosecutors appealed the order and it took nine years for the retrial to open.
The now retired judge blamed the mostly haphazard, outdated and out of step with international standard system for the delay.
‘Retrial is supposed to be the last possible measure to save the wrongfully incarcerated, but the system is not functioning as it should,’ Murayama told AFP in an interview last month.
Lawyers first called for a retrial in 1981. It would take 42 years for that process to actually start.
Murayama, who ordered the retrial but was not involved in the acquittal or compensation order, was stung by the experience and wants change.
‘I was once part of that system. And now that I learned what it’s really like, it’s my responsibility to fix it,’ he said.
Hakamada retired as a professional boxer in 1961 and started working in a soybean processing plant in Shizuoka, central Japan.
It was five years later that he was arrested for stabbing the four people to death in a case that became known as the Hakamata Incident.
He was finally granted a retrial amid claims that investigators may have fabricated evidence, and was released from prison in 2014. Hakamada was acquitted last year.
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