TOKYO, Sept. 28, 2024—Why it took so long? An 88-year-old death-row Japanese man Sept. 26, 2024 was acquitted by a local Japanese court after having served prison terms since his 1968 arrest for multiple murders, the world’s longest serving death-row inmate.
Iwao Hakamada spent 46 years behind the bars. His was the fifth not-guilty sentence delivered on murder trials in post-WWII Japan.
Hakamada broke the record of Sadamichi Hirasawa who spent 39 years in prison and never came out before dying in 1987 for a mass-murder of Imperial Bank branch employees in Tokyo that prosecutors said he committed in 1948.
One explanation/analysis provided by the Asahi Shimbun newspaper Sep. 27, 2024:
Former death row inmate Iwao Hakamada cuts a profoundly tragic figure in the annals of Japan’s deeply flawed justice system. He was a victim of a gross miscarriage of justice that took decades to set right.
In a high-profile retrial, the Shizuoka District Court on Sept. 26 acquitted the 88-year-old Hakamada of the stabbing murders of four members of a family in Shizuoka Prefecture 58 years ago.
He was wrongfully convicted based on evidence fabricated by investigative authorities. In the absence of a court rectifying this error, Hakamada spent nearly half a century in a solitary cell in a detention house, constantly facing the frightening prospect of execution.
This constitutes nothing less than the worst violation of human rights by the state.
THE ‘EVIDENCE’
The district court decision determined that the key evidence submitted by prosecutors all those years ago was falsified by the investigative agencies, and denied its admissibility.
Five items of bloodstained clothing found in a miso tank near the crime scene at the company where Hakamada worked, and a scrap of cloth claimed to have been found at Hakamada’s home, were cited by prosecutors as evidence directly linking him to the murders.
The bits of clothing turned up more than a year after the slayings and while Hakamada was on trial.
But after a rigorous examination of the testimony and “supposed” evidence, the court denied that these pieces of “evidence” bore any relation to the crime.
The focus of the examination was on scientific evidence concerning “reddish” blood stains on the clothing and the circumstances in which the items were found. An experiment by the defense lawyers showed that the blood should have turned blackish after being immersed in miso for so long.
The ruling also dismissed a record of Hakamada’s confession as an “effective fabrication,” pointing out that it was extracted through “inhumane interrogation.” The court concluded that Hakamada could not be identified as the perpetrator.
The absence of Hakamada in the courtroom best conveyed the unfairness of the case.
Since the Shizuoka District Court agreed to a retrial 10 years ago, Hakamada has been living with his sister Hideko, 91. But the psychological symptoms of confinement apparent at the time of his release have persisted, making it difficult for him to have normal communication. He was exempted from appearing in court for the retrial.
As a “hosanin” (assistant in court), a person who is granted the rights to consent, annul, or act as an agent to protect the rights of someone whose decision-making capacity is impaired, Hideko sought “true freedom” for her brother. Speaking to her while handing down the ruling on Sept. 26, Presiding Judge Koshi Kunii said, “The door to freedom has been opened.”
What is urgent is the finalization of this acquittal and the redress of Hakamada’s rights.
WHAT WENT SO TERRIBLY WRONG?
The court’s acknowledgment that key evidence against Hakamada was fabricated is bound to undermine the foundation of trust in investigative agencies.
The Shizuoka District Court and the Tokyo High Court made similar points when they decided to start the retrial, but the prosecution vehemently argued in the new trial that there was no benefit in fabricating evidence.
Prosecutors will only deepen the public’s distrust of the criminal justice process if they turn their collective backs on the judiciary’s recognition of evidence fabrication for a third time.
Even in not-so-serious cases that do not warrant the death penalty, instances of fabricated evidence by the police and prosecution have been disclosed in recent years.
An unrepentant attitude among law enforcement authorities may have led to a cycle of mistakes.
The prosecution should not appeal the latest decision. Sixteen years have already passed since the second petition for a retrial was filed. The admissibility of the five articles of clothing as evidence was also scrutinized in the retrial petition proceedings, including by the Supreme Court.
The decision for a retrial in Hakamada’s case was made after the presence of new “clear evidence that would lead to an acquittal,” which is required by the Code of Criminal Procedure for a new trial, was recognized by the judiciary.
The legitimacy of the death sentence handed to Hakamada has long been lost. Once carried out, capital punishment cannot be reversed, even in cases where new evidence emerges that could have exonerated the convicted individual.
What is required of the prosecution is not to delay the finalization of the acquittal through an appeal but to start a rigorous review of the processes of how the original investigation, trial and retrial procedures were carried out.
The court, too, cannot evade a serious re-examination of both the first trial, in which Hakamada was erroneously convicted at every stage of the three-tier system, and the whole process from the first retrial petition to the actual retrial.
Even the first-instance court that convicted him during the first trial called into question the lengthy, intimidating interrogations that extracted a confession from Hakamada. There must have been strong doubts from the beginning about the way investigations were conducted.
The court seems to have lacked a solid commitment to scrutinizing fundamentally core evidence for truthfulness.
Particularly in the 1980s, when Hakamada first filed for a retrial, there were four cases where the death row inmates were exonerated in retrials, including the 1954 rape and murder of a 6-year-old girl in the city of Shimada, Shizuoka Prefecture, which was handled by the same Shizuoka police.
Judges, in particular, should have been more sensitive to the implications of these cases and paid more attention to the importance of reviewing past convictions with fresh eyes.
At that time, biased news reports on the Hakamada case spread prejudice, viewing him as the perpetrator. News outlets also need to learn bitter lessons from the case.
DYSFUNCTION OF RETRIAL SYSTEM
It has taken such an enormous amount of time to correct this miscarriage of justice. The procedures to decide on the admissibility of a retrial take time, often denying the individual in question the chance to receive a fresh trial.
Under Article 39 of the Constitution, which prohibits pursuing criminal liability after an acquittal, a retrial can be held only for the benefit of a convicted criminal. So, a retrial is not a simple redo of a trial but an institutional arrangement to preserve the rights of a person who has been wrongly convicted. But it is clear that the system is not fully functioning as such.
The backdrop to this problem lies squarely with the Code of Criminal Procedure, which barely mentions retrial procedures. Decisions on a retrial tend to depend on the attitude of the presiding judge. Lawyers contend there is what they call a “retrial disparity.”
In the Hakamada case, the decisive factor was that during the second retrial petition proceedings, the Shizuoka District Court persistently and successfully urged the prosecution side to disclose for the first time color photos and negatives of the five pieces of clothing, which had not appeared in the first trial.
Ensuring the proper handling of evidence, which has been at the discretion of investigators, is also an urgent task. Although the introduction of the “saiban-in” lay judge system has institutionalized evidence disclosure, it has not extended to retrial procedures.
Judges are human, and it is impossible to eliminate judicial mistakes completely. Therefore, it is vital to expedite efforts to establish a more efficient and effective retrial system that can correct a wrongful conviction as quickly as possible.
Without this step, it is impossible to eradicate the terrible damage of wrongful convictions that Hakamada experienced over so many years.
–The Asahi Shimbun, Sept. 27
###