Japanese boxer who was wrongfully convicted of murder and spent more than 4 decades on death row awarded $1.4m

Tuesday, March 25, 2025 - A Japanese man 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, March 25.

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

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

“I think the fact that he will receive it… compensates him a little bit for all the hardship,” lawyer Hideyo Ogawa told reporters.

“But in light of the hardship and suffering of the past 47 or 48 years, and given his current situation, I think it shows that the state has made mistakes that cannot be atoned for with 200 million yen,” he added.

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 was convicted of robbing and murdering his boss, the man’s wife, and their two teenage children. While he initially denied the charges, police claimed he later confessed.

During his trial, he maintained his innocence, saying his confession was coerced. More than a year after the murders, investigators presented blood-stained clothes as key evidence—evidence that the court later determined had been planted by authorities.

Hakamada now lives with his sister, supported by activists and legal advocates. He is the fifth death row inmate in Japan’s post-war history to be granted a retrial, with all four previous cases also ending in exoneration.

Japan remains one of the few industrialized nations, alongside the United States, to uphold capital punishment—a policy that enjoys broad public support. Following Hakamada’s acquittal, Japan’s justice minister reaffirmed in October that abolishing the death penalty would be "inappropriate."