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A Japanese court has awarded a record 217 million yen ($1.44 million) in compensation to Iwao Hakamata, who spent nearly 50 years awaiting execution before being proven innocent.
In detail, the Shizuoka District Court in Japan issued a historic ruling ordering compensation for Iwao Hakamata, 89, who spent nearly half a century behind bars awaiting execution before being declared innocent.
According to Kyodo News, which cited statements from the man's defense team, the compensation decision came in response to a lawsuit filed by Hakamata in January of this year, and the ruling was issued yesterday.
The defense team explained that the compensation includes a full 47 years of "physical confinement from the moment of arrest until his release."
The case dates back to 1966, when Hakamata was arrested for the robbery and premeditated murder of his boss, his wife, and their two children. After 20 days of intensive interrogation, the man confessed to the crime, but later asserted during the trial that his confession was obtained under torture and that he had been forced to make a false confession.
In 2014, DNA tests conducted by the Shizuoka District Court's forensic laboratory proved that Hakamata's DNA did not match biological samples extracted from the crime scene. Based on this new evidence, Hakamata was temporarily released, but in 2023, the Tokyo High Court ruled that the case should be retried by a lower court.
Final Acquittal and Evidence Forgery
At the end of September 2024, the Shizuoka District Court issued a new acquittal for Hakamata, citing three instances of apparent falsification of the evidence presented to prove his guilt.
The court stated in its ruling that "there is an extremely high risk of violating the defendant's right to silence and of forcing him to make false confessions as a result of physical and psychological torture during cruel and inhumane interrogations." Consequently, the court decided to exclude all confessions and statements obtained in this manner from the evidence.
The court also found clear forgery in a piece of fabric that allegedly matched part of the pants found during a search of Hakamata's home.
Furthermore, the court deemed it unreasonable that bright red blood stains would remain on the clothing more than a year after it was immersed in a tank containing miso paste. The court concluded that these three instances demonstrated deliberate evidence tampering.
Closing the Case
A month after the ruling, the Public Prosecution announced in October 2024 that it would not appeal the acquittal decision. Hakamata thus achieved his final acquittal after decades of injustice, bringing to a close one of the longest and most controversial cases in the history of the Japanese judicial system.
This historic ruling reflects not only the personal tragedy of a man who spent half a century in harsh conditions due to a judicial error, but also highlights the need for radical reforms in Japan's criminal justice system to ensure that such cases are not repeated in the future.
Source: RIA Novosti - https://ar.rt.com/zjl1 - Published on 25-3-2025
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