Japan compensates exonerated man $1.4 mln after 46 years on death row
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Hakamada, a former boxer now aged 89, was exonerated in 2024 of a 1966 quadruple murder following a relentless campaign led by his sister and supporters.
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Iwao Hakamada, who was on death row for nearly a half-century and was acquitted last month by the Shizuoka District Court, goes out for a walk in Hamamatsu, Shizuoka prefecture, central Japan, Thursday, October 17, 2024 (AP)
A Japanese man who was wrongly convicted of murder and became the world’s longest-serving death row inmate has been awarded $1.4 million in compensation, an official confirmed.
The payout amounts to 12,500 yen ($83) for each day of the 46 years that Iwao Hakamada spent behind bars—most of them on death row, where each day could have been his last.
Hakamada, a former boxer now aged 89, was exonerated in 2024 of a 1966 quadruple murder following a relentless campaign led by his sister and supporters.
A court spokesperson told AFP that the Shizuoka District Court, in a ruling dated Monday, stated, “the claimant shall be granted 217,362,500,000 yen.” The same court had ruled in September that Hakamada was not guilty in a retrial, concluding that police had tampered with evidence.
The court had previously acknowledged that Hakamada endured “inhumane interrogations meant to force a statement [confession]” that he later retracted. Local media reported that the compensation sum is a record for this type of case.
However, Hakamada’s legal team argues that the amount does not reflect the immense suffering he endured.
His decades of imprisonment—while living under constant threat of execution—severely affected his mental health, his lawyers have said, describing him as “living in a world of fantasy.”
Hakamada is the fifth death row inmate in Japan’s postwar history to be granted a retrial, with all four previous cases also ending in exonerations.
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