A Japanese man who spent more than 40 years on death row until he was acquitted last year has been awarded $1.4 million in compensation, a court said on Tuesday \u2013 roughly $85 for each day he was wrongfully convicted. <\/p>\n
Former professional boxer Iwao Hakamada, 89, was sentenced to death in 1968 for a quadruple murder despite repeatedly alleging that the police had fabricated evidence against him. <\/p>\n
Once the world\u2019s longest-serving death row inmate, he was acquitted after a DNA test showed that the bloodstained clothing which was used to convict him was planted long after the murders, according to Japanese public broadcaster NHK. <\/p>\n
His legal representative Hideyo Ogawa described the compensation as the \u201chighest amount\u201d ever handed out for a wrongful conviction in Japan, but said it could never make up for what Hakamada had suffered. <\/p>\n
\u201cI think the state (government) has made a mistake that cannot be atoned for with 200 million yen,\u201d the lawyer said, according to NHK. <\/p>\n
Hakamata retired as a professional boxer in 1961 and got a job at a soybean processing plant in Shizuoka, central Japan. <\/p>\n
Five years later he was arrested by police after his boss, his boss\u2019 wife and their two children were found stabbed to death in their home. <\/p>\n
Hakamata initially admitted to the charges against him, but later changed his plea, accusing police of forcing him to confess by beating and threatening him. <\/p>\n
He was sentenced to death in a 2-1 decision by judges in 1968. <\/p>\n
The one dissenting judge stepped down from the bar six months later, demoralized by his inability to stop the sentencing. <\/p>\n
Hakamata, who has maintained his innocence ever since, would go on to spend more than half his life waiting to be hanged. <\/p>\n
New evidence led to his release in 2014 pending a retrial, which acquitted him last year. <\/p>\n
His case brought global scrutiny to Japan\u2019s criminal justice system, where conviction rates stand at 99%, according to the Ministry of Justice website, and fueled calls to abolish the death penalty in the country. <\/p>\n
Hakamata was \u201cliving in his own world,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n
\u201cSometimes he smiles happily, but that\u2019s when he\u2019s in his delusion\u2026 We have not even discussed the trial with Iwao because of his inability to recognize reality.\u201d <\/p>\n<\/p>\n
A Japanese man who spent more than 40 years on death row until he was acquitted last year has been awarded $1.4 million in compensation, a court said on Tuesday \u2013 roughly $85 for each day he was wrongfully convicted. Former professional boxer Iwao Hakamada, 89, was sentenced to death in 1968 for a quadruple […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":11123,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11122","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/investingsstrategist.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11122","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/investingsstrategist.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/investingsstrategist.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/investingsstrategist.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11122"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/investingsstrategist.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11122\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/investingsstrategist.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11123"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/investingsstrategist.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11122"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/investingsstrategist.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11122"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/investingsstrategist.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11122"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}