An 88-year-old man believed to be the world’s longest-serving death row inmate was exonerated by a district court in Japan on Thursday, 44 years after he was first sentenced to death.

The man, Iwao Hakamada, was originally convicted of a quadruple murder in 1966 on the basis of what his defence lawyers say was a forced confession and fabricated evidence. Japan’s Supreme Court sentenced him to death in 1980. He was released a decade ago and granted a retrial that began last autumn.

Over the years, Hakamada, a former featherweight boxer, had consistently testified that he pleaded guilty only after the police interrogated him for 20 days, beating him with sticks and depriving him of sleep. He retracted his confession soon after making it.

“I feel relieved as he was ruled innocent,” said Hiroaki Murayama, a lawyer who as a judge in 2014 released Hakamada and ordered a retrial. “Why did it take so long?” Hideyo Ogawa, a lawyer for Hakamada, said that the ruling was a “landmark decision”.

Hakamada’s lawyers had won a retrial and his release 10 years ago after testing showed that blood on clothing that the police used as evidence didn’t contain his DNA. After the Shizuoka District Court granted him a retrial in 2014, the Tokyo High Court reversed that decision, refusing to re-open the case. In 2020, the Supreme Court ordered a new trial.

New York Times News Service