Hakamada Iwao and his sister Hideko talk to supporters two days after he was acquitted.
FIGHT OF HIS LIFE
Hakamada Iwao was the world’s longest- serving death row inmate, accused of crimes he did not commit. After decades campaigning to prove his innocence, he has finally been acquitted.
Hakamada Iwao has spent nearly 60 years accused of murder, and the best part of half a century on death row in Japan. His experience has broken his mental health and robbed him of any kind of normal life. But even though he’s been out of prison for a decade, only now are the authorities admitting that they got things wrong. In 1966 the former boxer was arrested on suspicion of killing the boss of the miso factory where he worked, along with his employer’s wife and two children. All had been stabbed in a robbery at their home in Shizuoka, west of Tokyo, before their house was set on fire. Hakamada confessed to the murders after 20
days of interrogation by the police. At his trial, however, he withdrew his confession, saying it had been beaten out of him. The court rejected his claim and in 1968 sentenced Hakamada to death. Hakamada, now 88, was to spend 46 years on Japan’s death row, as his appeals against the sentence and applications for retrials were heard and rejected.
His sister Hideko, along with Amnesty and other supporters, has long campaigned for his release. He featured in our 2012 Write for Rights campaign. (For this year’s campaign, see page 12.) The prolonged legal saga centred on some apparently bloodstained clothes found in a tank of miso after Hakamada’s arrest. These supposedly belonged to the accused.
In 2014, a judge concluded Hakamada’s conviction was unsafe after Hakamada’s lawyers
24 AMNESTY WINTER 2024
argued that the DNA on the clothing did not match that of their client. They also suggested that police could have fabricated the evidence. The judge noted that the clothes from the miso tank did not even fit the suspect. He ordered a retrial and the immediate release of Hakamada. It was to take another 10 years, however, before he was formally acquitted.
Japan has a notoriously harsh prison regime for those on death row, with prisoners kept in solitary confinement. This has taken a heavy mental toll on Hakamada, with a psychiatrist diagnosing him in prison as suffering from institutional psychosis. International law clearly states that the death penalty should not be used on people with mental or intellectual disabilities. The Hakamada case has shaken public confidence in Japan’s justice system, but the country still has the death penalty. And it has continued to hang people who have judicial appeals pending, in violation of international law. The last execution in the country was on 26 July 2022, but as of 31 December 2023, 107 out of the 115 people on death row had their death sentences finalised, which means they could be executed at any time – prisoners often get little notice of their impending execution. Amnesty International continues to campaign against the death penalty across the world. We oppose it in all cases, regardless of the nature or circumstances of the crime, and the guilt, innocence or other characteristics of the person accused. n
© Jiji Press/AFP/Getty Images
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