Japanese man receives apology after wrongly spending more than 50 years on death row

A Japanese police chief has apologised in person to a man who spent 50 years on death row for a quadruple murder, but was acquitted last month.

Iwao Hakamada, a former boxer, was acquitted by the Shizuoka District Court, which said police and prosecutors had collaborated to fabricate and plant evidence against him, and forced him to confess with violent closed interrogations.

The acquittal was finalised when the prosecution waved its right to appeal, ending Hakamada's near 60-year legal battle to prove his innocence.

Shizuoka Prefectural Police Chief Takayoshi Tsuda visited the 88-year-old Hakamada at his home and offered an apology in person.

“We are sorry to have caused you unspeakable mental distress and burden for as long as 58 years from the time of the arrest until the acquittal was finalised,” Tsuda said, as he stood in front of Hakamada and then bowed deeply.

“We are terribly sorry,” Tsuda added, promising a “meticulous and appropriate investigation.”

Hakamada, who has difficulty carrying out conversation due to his mental condition from the decades of death row confinement, responded: “What it means to have the authority ... Once you have the power, you’re not supposed to grumble.”

Hakamada’s 91-year-old sister, who had stood by her brother and now lives with him, thanked the police chief for visiting them.

“There is no use complaining to him after all these years. He was not involved in the case and he only came here as his duty,” she told reporters afterward. “But I still accepted his visit just because I wanted (my brother) to have a clear break from his past as a death row inmate.”

Subscribe free to our weekly newsletter for exclusive and original coverage from ITV News. Direct to your inbox every Friday morning.

Hakamada was arrested in August 1966, in the killing of an executive at a miso bean paste company and three of his family members in Hamamatsu, central Japan.

He was initially sentenced to death in a 1968 district court ruling but was not executed because of the lengthy appeal and retrial process in Japan.

It took nearly three decades for the Supreme Court to deny his first appeal for a re-trial. His second appeal for a re-trial, filed by his sister in 2008, was granted in 2014. The court ordered his release from his death row solitary cell but without removing his conviction, pending the retrial process.

Hakamada was the world’s longest-serving death row prisoner and only the fifth death row inmate to be acquitted in a retrial in postwar Japan, where criminal trials take years and retrials are extremely rare.

His case and acquittal have triggered calls for more transparency in the investigation, legal change to lower hurdles for a retrial and debate over death penalty in Japan.

Want a quick and expert briefing on the biggest news stories? Listen to our latest podcasts to find out What You Need To know...