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 on Tuesday.
The payout amounts to 12,500 yen ($83) for each day of the more than four decades that 89-year-old Iwao Hakamada spent behind bars, most of it on death row, where each day could have been his last. According to Japanese media, this marks a record-high compensation of its kind.
A former boxer, Hakamada was exonerated last year of a 1966 quadruple murder after a relentless campaign by his sister and supporters. His case brought renewed scrutiny to Japan’s justice system, where retrials are notoriously difficult to obtain, and death row inmates are often notified of their execution only hours before it is carried out.
The Shizuoka District Court, in a ruling dated Monday, declared that “the claimant shall be granted 217,362,500 yen ($1.44 million),” a court spokesman told AFP.
The same court ruled in September that Hakamada was not guilty in his retrial, concluding that police had tampered with key evidence. It also determined that he had suffered “inhumane interrogations meant to force a confession,” which he later retracted.
A Lifetime of Injustice
Hakamada’s legal team argued that the financial compensation fails to account for the immense suffering he endured from his 1966 arrest to his 2014 release, when he was granted a retrial.
“The fact that he will receive compensation is some recognition of his hardship,” said lawyer Hideyo Ogawa at a press conference. “But considering the 47 or 48 years of suffering he endured, it is clear the state has committed mistakes that cannot be atoned for with 200 million yen.”
Decades of solitary confinement—under the constant threat of execution—severely impacted Hakamada’s mental health. His lawyers have described him as “living in a world of fantasy.”
A Case Built on Forced Confession and Fabricated Evidence
Hakamada was convicted of robbing and murdering his boss, the man’s wife, and their two teenage children. Although he initially denied the charges, police claimed he later confessed. However, during his trial, he reasserted his innocence, stating that his confession was coerced.
More than a year after the killings, investigators produced blood-stained clothing—purportedly belonging to Hakamada—as key evidence. However, in his retrial, the court ruled that the evidence had been planted by investigators.
Now living with his sister and supported by advocacy groups, Hakamada is only the fifth death row inmate in Japan’s post-war history to be granted a retrial. In all previous cases, the retrials resulted in exonerations.
Capital Punishment in Japan
Japan remains one of the few industrialized democracies, alongside the United States, to retain capital punishment—a policy that continues to have strong public support.
Despite Hakamada’s acquittal, Japan’s justice minister reaffirmed in October that abolishing the death penalty would be “inappropriate.”