An 89 -year -old man acquitted after a new trial had physical and mental damage, concluded the judge.
A Japanese who has spent almost 50 years in the corridor of death for a murder sentence will be compensated for 217 million yen ($ 8.25 million), in which his lawyers say that it is the greatest payment of the country ever made in a criminal proceeding in the history of the country.
Iwao Hakamata, 89, was considered guilty in 1968 to kill his boss, his boss’s wife and two children, but was acquitted last year after a new trial.
Hakamata’s lawyers sought as much as possible compensation, claiming that the 47 years of detention made him condemned for the death that has spent more time waiting for the execution in the world and influenced his mental health.
Judge Kunii Koshi has agreed to have “extremely serious” physical and mental damage. The Japanese government will pay the allowance to Hakamata.
The case is one of the longest and most famous fresh sagas in Japan.
He received a new new trial and was released from prison in 2014 among the suspicions that investigators may have planted evidence that led to his sentence.
Last September, hundreds of people gathered in a court in Shizuoka, a city on the southern coast of Japan, where a judge decided to fulfill, based on the great applause e BityOr “alive” in Japanese.
Hakamata, however, was unable to participate in the hearing. He was fired by all previous auditions due to his mental state.
He has lived under the care of his sister Hideko for 91 years since he received a new process and was released. Hideko fought for decades to clean his brother’s name.
How the case was
Hakamata was working in a miso processing factory in 1966 when his boss, his boss’s wife and two children were recovered from a fire in his house in Shizuoka, west of Tokyo. All four were stabbed to death.
The authorities accused Hakamata of killing the family, setting fire at home and stealing 200,000 yen in cash.
Hakamata initially denied that he did it, but then he gave what he described as a forced confession, after beating and interrogations that lasted up to 12 hours a day. In 1968, he was sentenced to death.
For years, Hakamata’s lawyers claimed that the DNA recovered from the clothes of the victims did not correspond to his and said that the tests had been planted.
Although he obtained a new trial in 2014, prolonged legal proceedings have caused time to start the new trial until October.
The case raised questions about the Japanese judicial system, including the time brought to a new trial and forced the accusations of confessions.
With Chika Nakayama’s report, Gavin Butler and Shaimaa Khalil
Source: Terra
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