A Japanese court on Monday ordered a review of the trial of an 87-year-old man believed to be the world’s longest-serving death row inmate, nearly 60 years after he was convicted of murder.
Iwao Hakamada’s lawyers walked out of the Tokyo High Court on Monday after a brief hearing, waving banners demanding a new trial, while his supporters shouted, “Free Hakamada, now.”
“I’ve been waiting for this day for 57 years and it has come,” said Hideko, Mr. Hakamada’s sister and main supporter.
This Japanese man spent more than four decades on death row after his 1968 death sentence for the quadruple murder of his boss and three members of his family.
Mr. Hakamada had confessed to the crime after weeks of interrogations in detention, before recanting. He has since maintained his innocence, but the sentence was confirmed in 1980.
This former boxer was released in 2014, a court having admitted doubts about his guilt based on DNA tests carried out on bloody clothes, the centerpiece of the prosecution, and having decided to offer him a new trial.
But in 2018, a new twist: on appeal from the prosecution, the Tokyo High Court questioned the reliability of DNA tests and canceled the 2014 decision.
The Japanese Supreme Court then overturned the decision at the end of 2020 which prevented Mr. Hakamada from being tried again in an attempt to obtain his acquittal, news that his sister Hideko then welcomed as a “Christmas present”.
His relatives highlight the psychological scars left on him by more than four decades in a cell, to fear his execution by hanging every day.
In recent years, requests for retrials have increased in the Japanese archipelago, due to changes in the justice system, including the implementation of popular juries for serious crimes and the fact that prosecutors must present physical evidence. to the defense. This was not the case in the past and it resulted in confessions to the evidence.
Japan is, with the United States, one of the last industrialized and democratic countries to still resort to the death penalty, to which the Japanese public opinion is largely favourable.