Longest Death Row Inmate Exonerated After 56 Years in Japan

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Uncover the story of Iwao Hakamada, exonerated after 56 years on death row in Japan, highlighting wrongful conviction issues.

1 World’s longest-serving death-row inmate to hear fate

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2 After Decades On Death Row, Inmate Finally Gets A Chance At Justice

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1 Some key points about Iwao Hakamada, the longest-serving death row inmate exonerated:
  1. Background: Iwao Hakamada was a former boxer who was wrongfully convicted in 1966 for the murder of his boss, the boss’s wife, and their two children.

  2. Conviction Details: His conviction was largely based on a confession obtained after lengthy and harsh police interrogation, lasting 23 days, during which he allegedly faced physical abuse and threats.

  3. Evidence Issues: The prosecution presented evidence, including a bloodstain on his pajamas, but Hakamada maintained his innocence throughout the trial and subsequent years.

  4. Exoneration: In March 2020, after years of legal battles, Hakamada was exonerated when new DNA evidence suggested that the blood found on the pajamas did not match him.

  5. Significance: Hakamada’s case is notable for highlighting issues of wrongful convictions and the use of torture in police interrogations, sparking discussions about the death penalty in Japan.

  6. Current Status: After his release, Hakamada, who spent nearly five decades in prison, faced challenges reintegrating into society after such a long time in confinement.

3 Japanese court has acquitted world’s longest serving death row convict | DW News

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26 sep 2024

Iwao Hakamada spent nearly half a century on death row after his 1968 conviction for the murder of his boss, the man’s wife and two children. He was granted a retrial in 2014 after his lawyers argued that police fabricated key evidence. Hakamada was released from prison then – but was not cleared of the charges due to Japan’s slow justice system. Hakamada is 88 years old.

4 Japanese inmate released after 48 years on death row


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Educational: Wronged by the System. Please Listen to this video

2 Iwao Hakamada: Background and Case Details
  1. Early Life:

    • Iwao Hakamada was born on June 10, 1936, in Shizuoka, Japan. Before his wrongful conviction, he was a promising boxer and had aspirations of being a professional athlete.
  2. The Crime:

    • In 1966, Hakamada was accused of murdering his boss, the boss’s wife, and their two children in a horrific incident. The crime took place in their home in the city of Shizuoka.
    • The victims were found brutally stabbed, and the case gained significant media attention.
  3. Arrest and Confession:

    • Hakamada was arrested soon after the crime due to the discovery of a bloodstain on his pajamas, which police claimed was evidence linking him to the murders.
    • Following his arrest, Hakamada underwent intense interrogations lasting several days, during which he was reportedly subjected to physical and psychological abuse.
    • Under duress, he confessed to the crime, but he later recanted, stating that the confession was coerced.
  4. Trial and Conviction:

    • In 1968, Hakamada was convicted and sentenced to death based largely on his confession and the circumstantial evidence.
    • His defense argued that the evidence was insufficient and pointed to inconsistencies in the prosecution’s case.
  5. Legal Battles:

    • Over the decades, Hakamada’s legal team worked tirelessly to appeal his conviction. Several appeals were denied, and he remained on death row.
    • His case highlighted serious flaws in the Japanese legal system, particularly regarding the treatment of suspects and the reliability of confessions obtained under duress.
  6. Exoneration:

    • In 2014, new developments arose when Hakamada’s case was revisited. A court granted him a retrial based on doubts about the validity of the evidence used against him.
    • In March 2020, after further investigation and new DNA testing, the Shizuoka District Court declared Hakamada’s conviction null and void, citing that the evidence did not support his guilt. The blood on his pajamas was found to match the victims, not him.
    • Hakamada was released from prison, having spent 54 years on death row, making him the longest-serving death row inmate in the world.
  7. Post-Release Life:

    • After his release, Hakamada faced challenges reintegrating into society. He had spent the majority of his life in prison, and many aspects of modern life were foreign to him.
    • His case has drawn international attention, sparking discussions about the death penalty and wrongful convictions in Japan.
  8. Legacy and Impact:

    • Hakamada’s story has become emblematic of the issues surrounding the death penalty and wrongful convictions, prompting calls for reform in Japan’s criminal justice system.
    • His exoneration has fueled ongoing debates about police practices, legal protections for suspects, and the ethics of capital punishment.
Conclusion

Iwao Hakamada’s case is a poignant example of the potential for miscarriages of justice, the impact of systemic flaws in the legal system, and the human cost of wrongful convictions. His story serves as a critical reminder of the need for vigilance in safeguarding the rights of individuals within the justice system.

5 Japanese court acquits longest-serving death row prisoner • FRANCE 24 English

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6 Iwao Hakamada: Japan retrial for world’s longest-serving death row inmate

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13 mrt 2023
 

Iwao Hakamada, now 87, was on death row for nearly half a century after being convicted of murder.

Educational; 46 year on death row innocent: we can not trust the police

3 Hakamada’s story has become emblematic

Hakamada’s story has become emblematic of the issues surrounding the death penalty and wrongful convictions.
It means that his case highlights and represents broader systemic problems in the justice system.

  1. Wrongful Convictions:
    Hakamada’s long imprisonment despite being innocent underscores the risk of wrongful convictions in any legal system.
    It illustrates how innocent individuals can be convicted due to flawed evidence, coercive interrogation techniques, or other injustices.

  2. Death Penalty Concerns: His status as the longest-serving death row inmate emphasizes the ethical and moral dilemmas associated with capital punishment. Hakamada’s case raises questions about the reliability of evidence and the potential for irreversible mistakes in the context of the death penalty.

  3. Systemic Flaws: Hakamada’s experiences reflect issues such as:

    • Coercive Interrogation: The use of aggressive interrogation tactics that can lead to false confessions.
    • Legal Protections: The inadequacy of legal safeguards for suspects, especially in capital cases.
    • Judicial Processes: The challenges and biases present in the judicial system that can affect the fairness of trials.
  4. Public Awareness and Reform: His case has brought attention to the need for reforms in the criminal justice system, including calls for better protections against wrongful convictions and scrutiny of death penalty practices. It serves as a catalyst for discussions on how to prevent similar injustices in the future.

  5. Symbol of Hope: Hakamada’s eventual exoneration also symbolizes hope for those wrongfully convicted and illustrates that, despite the systemic issues, it is possible for justice to be served after a long fight.

Overall, Hakamada’s story is significant
not just as an individual case
but as a representation of the complex and
often troubling issues

surrounding the justice system,
particularly regarding the death penalty
and wrongful convictions.

7 Iwao Hakamada: Tragic Story Of Japan’s Innocent Man Given Death Penalty, Who Spent 46 Years In Jail

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8 Japan: World’s Longest Serving Prisoner Iwao Hakamada Acquitted | Newspoint | World News | WION

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27 sep 2024

A court in Japan acquitted Iwao Hakamada, the world’s longest-serving death row inmate, half a century after he was arrested and sentenced to death on the basis of some ‘blood-stained cloths’ found near the site of the quadruple murders. Watch to know more.

9 Japan News Today | Japanese Man Who Spent 46 Years On Death Row Cleared Of Murders | N18G

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10 Japanese man nears half century on death row


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11 World’s Longest Serving Death Row Inmate Acquitted of Murder

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26 sep 2024

World’s Longest Serving Death Row Inmate Acquitted of Murder

12 Japanese Court Acquits World’s Longest Convict On Death Row In Landmark Retrial | #japan #court

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Educational

13 Japanese court acquits longest-serving death row prisoner | AFP


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14 Japan court acquits man decades after death sentenceーNHK WORLD-JAPAN NEWS

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26 sep 2024 #japan #analysis #crime

An 88-year-old man sentenced to death for a 1966 mass murder was acquitted on Thursday by a court in central Japan. As NHK World’s Hirata Miyu explains, Hakamada Iwao’s case spotlights problems in the country’s judicial system.

Educational: Important Content

15 Japanese man acquitted of murders after 45 years on death row


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16 World’s Longest Serving Death Row Inmate Acquitted of Murder


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26 sep 2024
 
World’s Longest Serving Death Row Inmate Acquitted of Murder

17 Japanese man acquitted of 1966 murders after 45 years on death row

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26 sep 2024

Japanese man acquitted of 1966 murders after 45 years on death row [Pelican Journalist]

18 Prosecutors Force Retrial on Iwao Hakamada, Who Spent Decades On Death Row

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Live gestreamd op 25 jul 2023

PRESS CONFERENCE
Hideko Hakamada, Sister of Iwao Hakamada
Hideyo Ogawa, Attorney at law

Commentary on the trial and the case review – 1 hour.

20 The world’s longest-serving death row prisoner has been acquitted

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21 The world’s longest-serving death row prisoner has been acquitted

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28 sep 2024


Japanese man acquitted of 1966 murders after 45 years on death row.

Iwao Hakamada is a Japanese man who spent a remarkable 45 years on death row before being acquitted of murder charges in 2024. His case has become a symbol of wrongful convictions and the fight for justice in Japan.

The Case
Hakamada was accused of murdering his former boss and three family members in a 1966 incident. Despite maintaining his innocence, he was sentenced to death in 1968. The case was marked by controversy, with questions raised about the evidence used to convict him.

A Long Fight for Freedom
Hakamada’s sister, Hideko, dedicated her life to proving her brother’s innocence. She tirelessly fought for his release, filing numerous appeals and seeking retrials. Her efforts were finally rewarded in 2014 when a court ordered his release from death row due to concerns about the evidence.

The Retrial and Acquittal
A retrial began in 2024, and on September 26, 2024, Hakamada was acquitted of all charges. The court found that the evidence presented against him was unreliable and that there was reasonable doubt about his guilt.

A Landmark Case
Hakamada’s case has drawn attention to the issue of wrongful convictions in Japan and has raised questions about the country’s criminal justice system. His acquittal is a significant victory for justice and a testament to the perseverance of his sister and his legal team.

22 Iwao Hakamada: un condamné à mort libre, pour l’instant

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7 sep 2018
 
A le voir trottiner dans les rues de Hamamatsu (centre du Japon), chapeau vissé sur la tête, Iwao Hakamada passe pour un simple octogénaire en balade: rien ne laisse imaginer qu’il est un condamné à mort en sursis. REPORTAGE

22 Iwao Hakamata : Rituals of Deliverance (Full Documentary・English Subtitled)

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20 nov 2022

0:00 Prologue
3:36 I. The University
9:05 II. The Train Station
16:22 Breaktime
16:50 III. The Hotel
18:38 IV. The Underpass
20:35 Epilogue
22:37 Sister and Brother

23 Horrified over death row for 5 decades

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22 mrt 2020 JAPAN

This Japanese man spent almost five decades on death row. He could go back.

Iwao Hakamada looks out the window of his home in Hamamatsu in Japan’s Shizuoka prefecture.

Photos of Iwao Hakamada spread along the tatami mat at his home in Hamamatsu.

Iwao Hakamada was briefly a professional boxer who fought 29 bouts.

Iwao Hakamada and his sister Hideko (right) at their home in Hamamatsu.

Iwao Hakamada pictured leaving a Tokyo detention in 2014 after 48 years on death row.

Hideko Hakamada, the elder sister of death row inmate Iwao Hakamada speaks to media reporters after the Shizuoka District Court accepted a request for a retrial on 27 March 2014 in Shizuoka, Japan.

A letter that Iwao Hakamada wrote to his mother from prison, claiming his innocence, sits on tatami mat in Hamamatsu.

Sitting in an armchair next to his sister, in a cozy living room in the Japanese city of Hamamatsu, Iwao Hakamada looks like your average 83-year-old grandpa.

But in 2014, he became the world’s longest-serving death row inmate, after spending nearly five decades in a tiny, solitary cell waiting for the hangman’s call.

In 1966, the former professional boxer-turned-factory worker was accused of robbery, arson and the murder of his boss, his boss’ wife and their two children. The family was found stabbed to death in their incinerated home in Shizuoka, central Japan.
Iwao initially admitted to all charges before changing his plea at trial. He was sentenced to death in a 2-1 decision by judges, despite repeatedly alleging that police had fabricated evidence and forced him to confess by beating and threatening him. The one dissenting judge stepped down from the bar six months later, demoralized by his inability to stop the sentencing.

A pair of blood-spattered, black trousers and his confession were the evidence against Iwao. The alleged motive ranged from a murder by request to theft.
But in 2004, a DNA test revealed that blood on the clothing matched neither Iwao nor the victims’ blood type.
In 2014, the Shizuoka District Court ordered a retrial and freed Iwao as he awaited his day in court, on the grounds of his age and fragile mental state. But four years later, the Tokyo High Court scrapped the request for a retrial, for reasons it would not confirm to CNN.
That means Iwao could go back to prison and face the death penalty — again.
His legal team has launched an appeal to get a retrial and is waiting to hear from the Supreme Court.

But in Japan, where the criminal justice system has a 99.9% conviction rate, clearing his name will not be easy.

Unexpected arrest:
The youngest of six siblings, Iwao grew up in the seaside city of Hamamatsu, around two hours from Tokyo by train.
The family was poor but enjoyed a happy and stable environment, says Hideko Hakamada, Iwao’s 86-year-old sister, who has campaigned to clear his name. Iwao now suffers from mental illness brought on by decades of imprisonment.
As children, the siblings went fishing by the seaside during summer and roasted garlic cloves amongst the fallen leaves in their yard in autumn. Only three years apart in age, Hideko and her little brother — who she describes as calm and quiet — were close. “He was like my shadow. He would follow me around everywhere,” Hideko remembers.

CNN’s Junko Ogura contributed to this report.

[News script from CNN, by Emiko Jozuka and Yoko Wakatsuki,]

24 Hideko Hakamada- Nishijima- Wakabayashi: Iwao Hakamada, finally released from death row

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9 apr 2014
 
Hideko Hakamada: Sister of Iwao Hakamada Katsuhiko Nishijima: Hakamada case lead attorney, Attorney at law Hideki Wakabayashi: National Hakamada Support Committee & Executive Director of Amnesty International Japan
 

25 Iwao Hakadama, innocenté après 46 ans dans le couloir de la mort | 28 minutes | ARTE

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26 Un Japonais innocenté après 46 ans du couloir de la mort FRANCE 24


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26 sep 2024

Après 46 ans dans le couloir de la mort, un Japonais de 88 ans a été déclaré innocent ce jeudi 26 septembre. Il avait été condamnée à mort en 1968 pour un quadruple meurtre.

27 Japon : innocenté après 46 ans dans le couloir de la mort

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28 Japon: innocenté à 88 ans, dont 46 passés dans le couloir de la mort | AFP

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29 Japon: un condamné dans le couloir de la mort depuis 47 ans

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30 Japon:L’affaire symbolique du plus ancien condamné à mort finalement acquitté après 46 ans en prison

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26 sep 2024

Japon : L’affaire symbolique du plus ancien condamné à mort finalement acquitté après 46 ans en prison Iwao Hakamada, 88 ans, a passé 46 années dans le couloir de la mort, condamné pour le meurtre de son patron et trois membres de la famille de ce dernier……..by https://www.20minutes.fr/

Commentary on the trial and the case review – 1 hour.

31 FN: Un homme japonais innocenté après 46 ans dans le couloir de la mort

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26 sep 2024 FRANÇA
🌐 Bienvenue sur FastNews – votre passerelle vers des mises à jour mondiales en temps réel ! 🌍

🗺️ —— 🗺️

Lire l’article :

Un homme japonais, Iwao Hakamada, a été innocenté après avoir passé près de cinquante ans dans le couloir de la mort. Ce verdict marque une victoire importante contre une profonde injustice. Hakamada, âgé de 88 ans, avait été condamné à mort en 1968 pour le meurtre de sa famille. Il a toujours clamé son innocence, affirmant que les enquêteurs l’avaient forcé à avouer.

Le procès a suscité de vives interrogations sur l’utilisation de la peine de mort au Japon, l’un des rares pays du G7 à la maintenir. Les condamnés à mort ne sont informés de leur exécution que quelques heures à l’avance, sans possibilité de parler à leurs avocats ou à leur famille. Leur dernier échange se fait généralement avec un prêtre bouddhiste.

La décision de la cour de Shizuoka a révélé que trois éléments de preuve avaient été falsifiés, y compris la soi-disant confession de Hakamada. Sa sœur, Hideko, a mené un combat acharné pour prouver son innocence. Avant le verdict, elle a déclaré : “Nous avons lutté si longtemps, mais cette fois, je crois que cela sera réglé.”

Le soutien du public pour la peine de mort reste élevé au Japon, avec 80 % des personnes interrogées en faveur de son maintien. Cependant, le cas de Hakamada met en lumière les failles du système judiciaire japonais.

Des experts juridiques avaient prédit son acquittement, citant d’autres retrials réussis d’innocents condamnés à mort. Hakamada a été libéré en 2014 après l’émergence de nouvelles preuves. Les tests ADN ont prouvé que le sang retrouvé sur les vêtements n’était pas le sien.

Des centaines de personnes se sont rassemblées devant le tribunal, espérant assister à ce moment historique. Les défenseurs des droits de l’homme ont salué cette décision comme un pas vers la justice.

Alors que nous célébrons cette journée tant attendue pour Hakamada, nous sommes rappelés des dommages irréversibles causés par la peine de mort. Les militants appellent le Japon à abolir cette pratique pour éviter que de telles injustices n [ • Post ]…

32 JAPON : UN OCTOGÉNAIRE ACQUITTÉ APRÈS 46 ANS DANS LE COULOIR DE LA MORT

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26 sep 2024

Japon : un octogénaire acquitté après 46 ans passés dans le couloir de la mort. Iwao Hakamada, 88 ans, a été acquitté à l’issue d’un long feuilleton judiciaire après avoir été accusé d’un quadruple meurtre en 1966. Iwao Hakamada, un Japonais de 88 ans dont 46 passés dans le couloir de la mort, a été acquitté jeudi 26 septembre par le Tribunal de Shizuoka lors de son procès en révision. Le détenu ayant passé le plus d’années dans le couloir de la mort au monde était accusé d’avoir assassiné en 1966 son patron et trois membres de la famille de ce dernier. Il avait été condamné à la peine capitale deux ans plus tard. Dès le début de l’audience, le juge a déclaré que le Tribunal considérait l’accusé comme “étant innocent”. #japon #Iwaohakamada #freedom

4 “Free Hakamada” Film making project -Trailer-

33 “Free Hakamada” Film making project -Trailer-

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28 mrt 2021
 

English subtitle(3’51″) Director/Editor Chiaki Kasai Music Producer Steve Pottinger ©︎2021 Rain field Production

34 Soldier Caught Cheating on Army Wife

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Dissenting Judge Breaks 40-Year Silence

By Catherine Makino – Ipsnews.net

Nov 11, 2007

TOKYO, (IPS) – Norimichi Kumamoto says he still feels “tremendous anger” and cannot maintain his silence any longer. In 1968, he was one of three judges who sentenced a boxer to death on charges of murdering a family of four, although at the time he was convinced the man was innocent.

“My vote was overruled. It was a two to one,” Kumamoto, his voice rasping with troubled emotion, told a press conference here on Nov 6.

The other two judges had rejected his massive 360-page document arguing his reasons for believing the man to be innocent. A year later, Kumamoto, then a young judge with a promising future before him, quit the bench in protest.

For 39 years the convicted man, Iwao Hakamada, now 71, has remained on Japan’s death row in a small, windowless cell, wondering when the guards will come to march him to the scaffold.

Hakamada is slowly losing his mind, say his sister and campaigners. “Iwao’s spirit is on the verge of its end,” confirmed Catholic Cardinal Seiichi Sirayanagi of Tokyo in a booklet, entitled Save an Innocent Prisoner, which was circulated at the press conference.

“I have thought about his trial for many years,” Kumamoto, 70, told the gathered journalists. “I have felt sadness and disappointment over this.”

Besides finally breaking his silence by talking to the press, this month Kumamoto filed a petition with Japan’s Supreme Court demanding a retrial for Hakamada.

The evidence presented by the state prosecutors against Hakamada was insufficient for a conviction, Kumamoto said. “I thought we could not find him guilty … the five pieces of evidence that were provided did not make sense.” Prosecutors provided five items of bloodstained clothing as evidence. There was a pair of trousers which did not fit the one-time boxer, Kumamoto said.

He added: “The guilty verdict was based solely on Hakamada confessing to the killings.
But he confessed after being confined and tortured in a small room for 20 days.”

The court rejected 44 out of the 45 records of interrogations – in which Hakamada admitted to killing a soybean company executive and his family of three, in Shizouka prefecture, in the Chubu region of Honshu island – questioning whether these had been given voluntarily.

But it accepted one confession and based its conviction on this, said Kumamoto who now risks being charged for breaking a secrecy law barring judges from speaking after they reach joint decisions.

“During his trial at the Shizuoka District Court in December 1966 he retracted his confession and claimed he was innocent,” Amnesty has also reported, adding that taken together all the statements “contained nothing of substance”.

“I have to let the world know what happens in Japan,” Kumamoto said. “The police use shocking, barbaric means to extract confessions and those who make them do so only out of despair.” His view was supported by Hakamada’s chief lawyer Hideo Ogawa, who also spoke at the press conference.

“Japan has not changed its treatment of suspects since the 1600s, and they (the suspects) are not recognised as human beings,” Ogawa said. The judicial system was based largely on obtaining written confessions given to police investigators in unrecorded interrogation sessions, he said.

This was supported by official statistics provided by the Supreme Court to IPS after the press conference. In more than 90 percent of all court convictions last year there was an accompanying confession.

“If you are innocent but accused of a crime, there are few safeguards to protect you,” Ogawa charged. “The police can detain citizens up to 24 days. They do not have any rules regarding what time they can start the interrogation in the morning, or finish in the evening. And there is no lawyer in the room.” He added: “The Japanese believe that if the prosecutor says someone is guilty then it must be true.”

Ogawa is convinced that some innocent people had been wrongly convicted and executed. He recalled the case of Sakae Menda who was accused of murdering and injuring a family of four in Hitoyoshi City in Kumamoto Prefecture in 1948. He had been coerced into a confession after days of interrogation. Evidence supporting his alibi was ignored. Menda’s conviction was eventually overturned after he had spent more than 30 years in prison.

Japan is the only member of the Group of Seven industrialized nations, other than the United States, to maintain capital punishment.

Currently there are 104 people awaiting execution in Japan, according to Norimichi Kumamoto. Between 1946 and 1993, Japanese courts sentenced 766 people to death and 608 were executed.

Hakamada’s request for a retrial was rejected in 1994. His appeal to the Supreme Court for retrial has been held up for the last three years.

It is a case of
Fabricated Evidence and

A Broken Justice System

6 On Death Row in Japan

By Charles Lane – Policy Review

September 2005

Iwao Hakamada’s long wait

Iwao hakamada used to be a promising prizefighter. Crowds cheered his name. Nowadays, his only regular human contact is with prison guards, who address him by number. He spends his time pacing the floor of his nine-by-nine-foot cell at the Tokyo Detention Center. When his food comes, he stares at it for 30 minutes or so before taking a taste. He refuses most of the few visits he’s allowed. This is his life on death row in Japan, where Hakamada, now 69, has been for 25 years.

As far as the Japanese government is concerned, death row is exactly where Hakamada belongs. A court found him guilty of stabbing to death four people — a father, a mother, and their two children — robbing them, and setting their house on fire.

In Japan, the law is clear: Those who commit such crimes must be ready to pay with their lives. Between 1946 and 2003, Japanese courts sentenced 766 people to death, 608 of whom were executed. As of the end of 2004, there were 118 convicted criminals under sentence of death in Japan.

Sixty-eight of them, including Hakamada, had their convictions and sentences affirmed on appeal and were subject to execution at any time. No execution dates are given in advance. Rather, inmates learn that they’re to be executed when a guard comes one morning and gives them the news.

Largely because capital punishment has been abolished in Europe, Americans are used to thinking of their country’s retention of the death penalty as unique among the democratic nations of the world. But the advanced industrial democracy of Japan regularly sentences convicted murderers to die as well. And Japan is not the only democracy in East Asia to retain capital punishment — South Korea, Taiwan, the Philippines, Thailand, and Indonesia do so as well.

Like all those countries, Japan has faced international condemnation over its continued use of the death penalty, even more criticism perhaps than newer Asian democracies do. The United Nations Human Rights Commission has adopted unfavorable resolutions on Japanese capital punishment, and the Council of Europe, that continent’s principal intergovernmental human rights organization, has threatened Japan with loss of its observer status. Such words sting a government that would much rather discuss the quality of its exports and the responsible multilateralism of its foreign policy.

Yet on this issue, Japan, the world’s second-largest economic power, can afford to resist foreign critics. Unlike countries such as Poland, which abolished the death penalty in 1997 to meet one of the conditions for admission to the European Union, Japan is subject to no binding multilateral checks on its internal policies. Government statements on the death penalty simply repeat Tokyo’s longstanding position that the death penalty is a sovereign decision of each country, to be tailored to its crime-fighting needs.

Still, as Hakamada’s story shows, there will always be questions about whether the death penalty is being imposed fairly. Those questions are especially difficult for democracies such as the United States and Japan, which are committed to due process, individual rights, and the rule of law.

Indeed, the issue of innocence is now at the forefront of the capital punishment debate in the United States because new dna evidence has led to exonerations of some death-row inmates. Because Japan has stepped up its use of capital punishment in recent years, the issue may become more pressing there, too.

7 Hakamada’s story: What really happened: evidence was fabricated

Classification: Mass murderer
Characteristics: Japanese professional boxer – Robbery – Arson
Number of victims: 4
Date of murders: June 30, 1966
Date of arrest: August 1966
Date of birth: March 10, 1936
Victims profile: An executive of a miso company, his wife and their daughter and son
Method of murder: Stabbing with knife
Location: Shimizu, Shizuoka Prefecture, Japan
Status: Sentenced to death on September 11, 1968

Iwao Hakamada (袴田巖, born on March 10, 1936) was a Japanese professional boxer who was sentenced to death for the June 10, 1966 mass murder.

However, he was suspected for being falsely charged. He has been in prison for over 40 years, but has not been executed until now (Japan sometimes hasn’t executed suspected innocent prisoners such as Sadamichi Hirasawa). Japanese boxers believe his innocence.

As of 2009, he has been in prison for 42 years, the longest imprisonment among condemned prisoners in Japan.

Wikipedia.org

8 Mass murderer March 10, Stabbing with knife Shimizu, Shizuoka Prefecture, Japan
Sentenced to death on September 11, 1968

 

Mass murderer March 10, Stabbing with knife Shimizu, Shizuoka Prefecture, Japan Sentenced to death on September 11, 1968

Iwao hakamada was 30 years old in 1966. The erstwhile sixth-ranked featherweight in Japan had retired from the ring and was working in the town of Shimizu, Shizuoka Prefecture, at a plant that manufactured miso, a soybean paste used in soups and other foods.

On June 30, 1966, police found the bloody bodies of the plant’s managing director, his wife, and their two children. Their house had been robbed of 200,000 yen and set on fire. In August, police arrested Hakamada and charged him with murder, robbery, and arson. While in custody, he confessed.

On September 11, 1968, a three-judge panel of the Shizuoka District Court (there are no jury trials in Japan) convicted him and sentenced him to death.

But is Iwao Hakamada actually a quadruple murderer? He and his supporters say he’s innocent. They claim that Hakamada’s confession was forced out of him, and that the police planted crucial evidence, including a pair of bloodstained trousers that were supposedly worn by Hakamada but do not fit him. Even though he will no longer receive them at his prison cell, Hakamada’s lawyers are continuing to fight, against long odds, for a new trial.

When it sentenced Hakamada to death, the court imposed a penalty that enjoyed wide public support in Japan. It still does. In a February 2005 government survey, 81 percent of respondents agreed that the death penalty is still necessary in at least some cases. This is even more support than capital punishment currently enjoys in the United States. Japanese on both sides of the issue attribute the pro-death penalty tilt of contemporary public opinion partly to deep-rooted cultural and religious norms.

During the Heian era (794 ad to 1185 ad), which included the introduction of Buddhism from China, Japan’s rulers observed a moratorium on the death penalty. But in the centuries since, the imperatives of state authority and social order have tended to trump humanitarian qualms. As in the West, death was the punishment for a host of crimes in Japan, ranging from theft to murder, right up to modern times. After the Meiji Restoration of 1868, the list of capital offenses was narrowed to include only various forms of homicide and threats to the emperor, and decapitation and crucifixion were replaced by hanging — still the exclusive means of execution.

I was told repeatedly in Japan that even the gentle doctrines of Buddhism, as interpreted by the Japanese, encompass notions of justified retribution through capital punishment. These are buttressed by the widespread folk belief that the soul of a murdered person cannot rest until the murderer is put to death. “When a death penalty is given to someone,” says Futaba Igarashi, a professor of law at Yamanishi Gakuin University near Tokyo, “the rest of the people heave a sigh knowing that the order of society has been restored.”

There does not appear to have been much consideration given to abolishing the death penalty in the postwar constitution, which was, after all, drafted in large part by American occupiers who were hanging Japanese war criminals. When the death penalty was challenged in 1948 as a violation of the new charter’s ban on “cruel” punishment, the Japanese Supreme Court upheld it in terms of the traditional Japanese emphasis on communal stability over individual rights.

“Human life is precious. The life of a single person is worth more than the entire world,” the court acknowledged. But it added that the death penalty, “through its power of intimidation, provides general deterrence; the execution of death sentences eliminates a certain form of social evil; and in these ways the death penalty seeks to protect society. Moreover, the death penalty gives priority to a collective view of morality over an individual view of morality.”

*****

That opinion could serve as a summary of the Japanese government’s case for capital punishment today. Current law prescribes death for 17 offenses, from insurrection to murder. In practice, however, almost everyone now under sentence of death was convicted either of multiple murders or of murder in combination with another serious crime, such as rape, kidnapping, or robbery.

Though not laid down in statutory form, these criteria were suggested in a 1983 Japanese Supreme Court ruling. The court said capital punishment should be reserved for cases in which it is warranted by the “persistency and brutality of the act of killing,” “the number of murder victims,” “the effect on society” of the crime, the feelings of the victims’ families, and the defendant’s age and prior record. Prosecutors and courts treat these guidelines as binding.

The Ministry of Justice in Tokyo, which exercises central control over prosecutors across the country, often points to Japan’s adherence to the 1983 criteria as evidence that it proceeds selectively and consistently in capital cases — in implicit contrast to the United States, where similar crimes may or may not qualify for the death penalty depending on the state in which they occur. Prosecutors I spoke with in Japan said proudly, sincerely, and, no doubt, accurately that they never seek the death penalty before submitting the case to probing review by government lawyers who are in turn guided by the 1983 Supreme Court decision.

The crimes of which Hakamada was convicted qualified for the death penalty in 1966 — and would still have qualified after 1983. But he insists that he did not commit them. At his trial, he recanted the confession prosecutors had put before the judges. He described 23 straight days of daily 12-hour interrogations, punctuated by threats and beatings. “I could do nothing but crouch down on the floor trying to keep from defecating,” he later wrote to his sister. “At that moment one of the interrogators put my thumb onto an ink pad, drew it to a written confession record and ordered me, ‘Write your name here!’ [He was] shouting at me, kicking me and wrenching my arm.”

In convicting Hakamada, the Shizuoka court took note of his claims, dismissed some of his confession, and even chided the police for their tactics. But it said that there was nonetheless enough evidence to find him guilty and sentence him to death.

His efforts to overturn the verdict were rejected first by the intermediate court of appeals, known as the High Court, and then by the Supreme Court, which ruled on November 11, 1980. At that point, his death sentence became “final,” as the Japanese put it. Accordingly, Hakamada was transferred from a regular prison cell to solitary confinement on death row in the Tokyo Detention Center.

But the questions about his confession have not gone away. Nor have the legal structures that may have encouraged the police to wring it out of him. Under Japanese law, courts have traditionally treated a perpetrator’s own admission as more persuasive than other evidence, including circumstantial evidence or even forensics. Suspects may be held and questioned without access to a lawyer for up to 23 days.

Even after that, police are not required to let defense counsel sit in on their clients’ questioning, and the defense is not entitled to look at all the evidence in the files of police and prosecutors. The great pressure on police and prosecutors to produce confessions and the great latitude to question suspects behind closed doors have yielded recurring credible allegations of physical and psychological abuse during interrogations.

In the 1980s, such concerns led to the first death-row exonerations in Japan’s postwar history. Under Japanese law, the only way for a prisoner to escape execution after his conviction and death sentence have been upheld by the Supreme Court is to obtain a new trial based on new evidence that he is actually innocent. (There’s no exact counterpart to the habeas corpus review of the United States, under which death-row prisoners sometimes win new sentencing hearings because courts find that their constitutional rights were violated at trial.)

Until 1975, that rule had been interpreted narrowly, and no one had actually been awarded a retrial. But in 1975, the Japanese Supreme Court relaxed the interpretation. It said that to obtain a retrial, a prisoner must present clear new evidence that creates a reasonable doubt as to his guilt, rather than clear new proof of innocence.

Armed with this ruling, four death-row inmates who had been protesting their innocence since the early postwar years won new trials — and were acquitted. The most notorious of these miscarriages of justice involved Sakae Menda, convicted and sentenced to die for a double ax-murder in 1948 at the age of 23. The guilty verdict and death sentence had been based on the self-contradictory testimony of a prostitute and on Menda’s own confession, which had been extracted after he had spent 80 hours in a police station without sleep. After a retrial, he walked out of prison in 1983.

The four exonerations shook Japanese society and reverberated within the powerful Ministry of Justice. There were no executions between November 1989 (shortly after the last of the exonerations) and March 1993. During that time, the civil servants who wield behind-the-scenes power at the ministry conducted a review of the embarrassing acquittals. But it did not produce any fundamental changes.

According to leaked excerpts of the internal report, the ministry concluded that the four wrongful convictions reflected unique postwar conditions, such as flaws in prosecutors’ supervision of the police, that had since been corrected. The main lesson the authorities learned, David T. Johnson wrote in his study of Japan’s prosecutors, The Japanese Way of Justice (Oxford University Press, 2002), was that they must redouble their efforts to guarantee the accuracy of confessions.

The unofficial moratorium on executions ended on March 26, 1993, when three men were hanged. By that time, Iwao Hakamada was pursuing his own effort at exoneration. After the Supreme Court confirmed his conviction and sentence in 1980, a new team of lawyers, headed by Kazuo Itoh, the vice-chairman of the human rights committee of the Japan Federation of Bar Associations, stepped into the case.

In 1981, the lawyers filed a petition for retrial on Hakamada’s behalf. Itoh’s team asked doctors to conduct a reexamination of the physical evidence in the case, which resulted in the finding that the alleged murder weapon was the wrong size to produce the deep stab wound in one of the murdered children.

The lawyers were also able to show that a door through which police said Hakamada had entered and exited the victims’ home was locked at the time of the crime. And perhaps most important in the lawyers’ eyes, they showed that a pair of bloodstained pants the police said they had recovered at the scene 14 months after the crime were too small for Hakamada.

The gathering and presentation of this new evidence took the better part of 13 years. On August 9, 1994, the Shizuoka District Court rejected Hakamada’s petition. A subsequent appeal to the Tokyo High Court failed almost exactly 10 years later, on August 27, 2004.

“New evidence presented by the defense lacks clarity and contains nothing new as required to open a retrial,” Judge Fumio Yasuhiro wrote for the High Court, “and it cannot be said that it will generate reasonable doubt about the final judgment.” dna testing of the bloody pants was inconclusive, and Judge Yasuhiro agreed with prosecutors that Hakamada had been wearing them at the time of the crime. Itoh is appealing the case to the Supreme Court.

*****

Trends in japanese law and politics are not favorable to such an effort. During the two decades Hakamada’s lawyers have been seeking a retrial, the pro-death penalty consensus in Japan, which had been shaken by the exonerations of the 1980s, has solidified anew.

The principal cause may have been the deadly sarin gas attack launched by a terrorist cult on the Tokyo subway in March 1995, killing 12 people and injuring thousands. The public clamored for the conspirators to pay with their lives. And the government responded. Of 50 death sentences handed down in Japan between 1999 and 2002, nine went to the conspirators, and the cult’s founder was sentenced to death in 2004.

There’s an additional reason for the increasing public support for the death penalty. For the past decade, street crime has been on the rise in Japan. Most of the upsurge is due to theft, but the crime wave has included several sensational, brutal murders and rapes. Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty more often now because of “pressure from crime victims in the context of rising violent crime committed by strangers,” said a senior Tokyo prosecutor who spoke with me on condition of anonymity.

In 1999, a new victims’ rights lobby was established to support the death penalty and other tough-on-crime measures. When a three-person delegation from the leftist International Federation for Human Rights met the lobby’s representatives in October 2002, it found that “all the family members expressed the desire or willingness to personally ‘push the button’ for the execution.”

Though most current death-row inmates have petitions for retrial pending, not one such petition has been granted since 1989. Meanwhile, appeals courts have frequently overturned life sentences imposed by trial courts and replaced them with death sentences.

In one such case decided in 2004, the Supreme Court appeared to push the boundaries of its own landmark 1983 ruling slightly by upholding a death sentence in a murder case in which there was a single victim. The case involved the slaying of a 44-year-old woman in 1997 by Takashi Mochida. Mochida had stalked the woman after his release from prison, where he had served seven years for raping her. In revenge for her reporting him to the police, he stabbed her repeatedly, took her purse, which contained the equivalent of less than $100, and fled.

A Tokyo trial court sentenced Mochida to life imprisonment with eligibility for parole after ten years (there is no “life without parole” option in Japan). But after prosecutors appealed the sentence, as permitted under Japanese law, the High Court imposed death, and the Supreme Court agreed. Chief Justice Shigeo Takii wrote, “The motive [of vengeance] leaves no room for leniency. There was considerable premeditation and cruelty. With a prior murder conviction, there was no option but to hand out the death sentence.”

One should not exaggerate Japan’s use of the death penalty, especially in comparison with its use in the United States. In 2004, the United States executed 59 people, and Japan just two. The 118 people under sentence of death in Japan are a small fraction of the U.S. death-row population of 3,471.

Of course, Japan has both a much smaller population than the United States (128 million versus 295 million) and far fewer violent crimes (954 crimes resulting in death in 2002, according to the Japanese government, versus 16,200 non-negligent homicides that year in the United States, according to the fbi).

Still, Japan’s use of the death penalty is growing at a time when both crime and capital punishment are on the wane in the United States. The number of Japanese prisoners whose death sentences have been finalized, 68 as of December 31, 2004, represents a 36 percent increase over 1999, and almost three times the level of 1986. In contrast, the current U.S. death-row population is down 4.2 percent from 1999.

The comparison is perhaps most interesting when you calculate the rate at which Japanese and U.S. trial courts sentence people to death per homicide, a rough measure of a given jurisdiction’s propensity to punish intentional killing with capital punishment. In 2003, the last year for which figures are available, Japanese trial courts sentenced 11 convicted killers to death.

Dividing that number by the 954 deaths caused by intentional crimes in 2002 (the difference of a year reflects, roughly, the lag time between crime and sentence) produces a ratio of death sentences to homicides of 1.2 percent. As a nation, then, Japan was slightly more likely than the state of California to sentence a killer to death during that time frame — but slightly less likely to do so than Virginia, which is considered one of the most pro-death penalty U.S. states.

*****

How many of the convicted killers now under sentence of death in Japan might actually be innocent? Amnesty International, which is probably the harshest critic of the Japanese death penalty, says it has “received reports” that eight of the 118 people currently facing death sentences in Japan are innocent. But as the 1980s cases showed, even one would be a shock to the system. It’s a simple matter of statistics that as Japan imposes the death penalty more frequently, the chances of a wrongful death sentence increase too.

Thus, the Hakamada case remains a sensitive matter. The Ministry of Justice has a policy of not executing prisoners while their retrial petitions are pending — the main reason Hakamada has remained alive on death row for so long. But this rule is a matter of the ministry’s discretion, not a legal requirement.

In fact, a prisoner was executed in 1999 while his lawyer was preparing a new petition for retrial. Meeting with defense attorneys afterward, a senior Ministry of Justice official explained that the ministry does not ordinarily support executions of inmates still seeking retrial, but it reserves the right to do so if it considers a retrial petition repetitive or insubstantial.

A pardon is available in theory, either through a majority vote of the Japanese cabinet or at the recommendation of the National Offenders Rehabilitation Commission. In practice, however, pardons are rare. Since 1954, the cabinet has not issued a single pardon to a condemned prisoner; the rehabilitation commission granted one amnesty in each of 1965, 1970, and 1975.

Hakamada’s attorneys, not wanting to concede his guilt, have so far refrained from requesting a pardon. I asked Itoh last summer whether, given Hakamada’s age and the prospect of extended litigation at the Supreme Court, the most likely outcome is that he will die in prison. “I couldn’t deny the possibility,” he shrugged.

If their retrial petition fails, Hakamada’s lawyers could also ask a court to declare him ineligible for execution under a Japanese law that forbids imposition of the death penalty on the insane. According to those few people who have seen Hakamada recently, long-term solitary confinement for a crime he denies having committed has gradually driven him mad.

The only recent visitor he accepted was Nobuto Hosaka, an anti-death penalty activist and former member of the Diet. Hosaka, accompanied by a member of the ex-boxer’s legal team, used a ruse to induce Hakamada to receive him on March 10, 2003, the prisoner’s 67th birthday.

When Hosaka said, “Happy birthday,” Hakamada replied, “For me, there is no age; my age is infinite.” Hosaka told me the prisoner described himself as “the omnipotent God,” saying he had “absorbed” Iwao Hakamada, taken over the prison, and abolished the death penalty in Japan. There is no longer any such person as Iwao Hakamada, he told Hosaka. “Therefore, Iwao cannot be executed.”

Japan: Guilty Until Proven Innocent | 101 East

6 okt. 2016

Japan is famous for having one of the safest societies in the world, with exceptionally low levels of crime.
 
But does this clean image hide a darker side?
 
The country’s criminal courts have almost a 100 percent conviction rate.
 
But justice in Japan relies on confessions, and police and prosecutors have been accused of abusing their authority.
 
With advances in forensic and DNA technology, an increasing number of wrongful convictions are coming to light, proving that innocent people have been imprisoned, sometimes for life.
 
101 East asks: Is justice being served in Japan?