TOKYO – A Japanese man who was wrongly convicted of murder and became the world's longest-serving death row inmate has been paid $1.4 million (approximately 80.2 million pesos), an official said Tuesday.
Iwao Hakamada, a former professional boxer, was imprisoned for 46 years after being accused of murdering an executive, his wife, and two children in 1966. He was sentenced to death, but acquitted in 2024 after evidence was found to have been tampered with.
In 2014, he was released after being granted a retrial. According to the court, there is reason to believe that the police themselves fabricated the evidence.
A major part of the case was blood evidence on clothing found inside a tank of miso (fermented soybean paste) a year after the crime. His lawyers argued that the evidence was impossible because the blood was too bright, but prosecutors said it was real based on their experiment.
He was awarded 217.3 million yen, equivalent to 12,500 yen ($83) per day of his imprisonment. This is the largest compensation ever recorded in such a case.
But according to his legal team, the amount is not enough to compensate for the hardship and pain he suffered. 46 years in prison with the threat of death every day has severely affected Hakamada's mental health.
