Hideko Hakamada and her brother Iwao Hakamada, enter the Tokyo High Court on March 13, 2023. Kazuhiro NOGI / AFP
A Japanese court on Monday ordered a review of the trial of an 87-year-old man considered to be the world’s longest-serving death row inmate, nearly 60 years after his conviction for murder. Iwao Hakamada’s lawyers walked out of the Tokyo High Court on Monday after a short hearing, waving banners demanding a new trial, while his supporters shouted: “Free Hakamada now“.
“I’ve waited 57 years for this day and it has come“, welcomed Hideko, the sister of Iwao Hakamada and his main support. 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.
Trial with twists and turns
Iwao Hakamada had confessed to the crime after weeks of interrogations in detention, before recanting. He has since maintained his innocence, but the sentence was upheld in 1980. The former boxer was released in 2014 after a court admitted doubts about his guilt based on DNA tests carried out on bloody clothing, part mistress of the prosecution, and having decided to offer her 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 quashed the decision at the end of 2020 which prevented Iwao Hakamada to be tried again in an attempt to secure his acquittal, news that his sister Hideko then greeted as “Christmas gift“.
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Psychological sequelae
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.
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