World’s longest-serving death row prisoner awarded US$1.4 million after acquittal – that’s $85 for each day

Iwao Hakamada, 89, spent 46 years on death row after being convicted in 1968 of a quadruple murder, but was later acquitted. (Stringer/AFP/JIJI Press/Getty Images via CNN Newsource)

TOKYO — A Japanese man who spent more than 40 years on death row until he was acquitted last year has been awarded US$1.4 million in compensation, a court said on Tuesday – roughly $85 for each day he was wrongfully convicted.

Former professional boxer Iwao Hakamata, 89, was sentenced to death in 1968 for a quadruple murder despite repeatedly alleging that the police had fabricated evidence against him.

Once the world’s longest-serving death row inmate, he was acquitted after a DNA test showed that the bloodstained clothing which was used to convict him was planted long after the murders, according to Japanese public broadcaster NHK.

The Shizuoka District Court confirmed to CNN that Hakamata had been awarded more than 217 million yen – a payout that represents about US$85 per day since he was found guilty.

His legal representative Hideyo Ogawa described the compensation as the “highest amount” ever handed out for a wrongful conviction in Japan, but said it could never make up for what Hakamata had suffered.

“I think the state (government) has made a mistake that cannot be atoned for with 200 million yen,” the lawyer said, according to NHK.

Hakamata retired as a professional boxer in 1961 and got a job at a soybean processing plant in Shizuoka, central Japan.

Five years later he was arrested by police after his boss, his boss’ wife and their two children were found stabbed to death in their home.

Hakamata initially admitted to the charges against him, but later changed his plea, accusing police of forcing him to confess by beating and threatening him.

He was sentenced to death in a 2-1 decision by judges in 1968.

The one dissenting judge stepped down from the bar six months later, demoralized by his inability to stop the sentencing.

Hakamata, who has maintained his innocence ever since, would go on to spend more than half his life waiting to be hanged.

New evidence led to his release in 2014 pending a retrial, which acquitted him last year.

His case brought global scrutiny to Japan’s criminal justice system, where conviction rates stand at 99%, according to the Ministry of Justice website, and fueled calls to abolish the death penalty in the country.

Hakamata’s sister Hideko, who had long campaigned for his release, told CNN last year that decades of imprisonment had wrought irreversible damage on her brother’s mental health.

Hakamata was “living in his own world,” she said.

“Sometimes he smiles happily, but that’s when he’s in his delusion… We have not even discussed the trial with Iwao because of his inability to recognize reality.”