Man Awarded $1.4 million After Spending 46 Years On Death Row For Wrong Conviction...

A Japanese man, Iwao Hakamada who was wrongly convicted of murder and spent more than four decades on death row has been awarded $1.4 million in compensation, a court official confirmed on Tuesday.

 He spent 46 years on death row, making him the world's longest-serving death row inmate. 

 The compensation amounts to 12,500 yen ($83) for each day that the 89-year-old  spent in detention, making it the highest payout of its kind in Japan.....

Hakamada, a former boxer, was exonerated last year of a 1966 quadruple murder after years of campaigning by his sister and supporters. 

He was convicted of robbing and murdering his boss, the man’s wife, and their two teenage children. 

During his trial, he maintained his innocence, saying his confession was coerced.

His case drew international attention to Japan’s criminal justice system, where retrials are rare and death row inmates are often notified of their executions just hours before they are carried out.

In a latest decision the Shizuoka District Court ruled that “the claimant shall be granted 217,362,500 yen ($1.44 million),” a court spokesperson told AFP.

The same court had acquitted Hakamada in September, ruling that police had tampered with evidence. The court also noted that he had endured "inhumane interrogations meant to force a statement (confession),” which he later retracted.

Hakamada’s legal team welcomed the compensation but argued that it was insufficient given the suffering he endured from his 1966 arrest to his 2014 release when he was granted a retrial.

Decades on death row—living under the constant threat of execution—have significantly affected Hakamada’s mental health, his lawyers said, describing him as “living in a world of fantasy.”

Hakamada now lives with his sister, supported by activists and legal advocates. 

from AFP