Half a century has been waiting for gallows by mistake

Among the many paradoxes of Japan, none like IWAO HAKAMADA HISTORY. In 1968 he was 30 years old and life changed him forever. A court in the country declared him guilty of four murders and a fire, and as a result he received the capital punishment. Hakamada became the prisoner that spent more time in a death corridor, and we say it in the past because after half a century among bars, now it is free.

All It was a mistakeand Japan wants to compensate.

Symbolic compensation. Hakamada, Japanese professional exboxer, has received compensation of 217 million yen (around 1.4 million dollars) After spending more than 40 years convicted of death for a crime he did not commit, which made him the prisoner in the death corridor with more confinement time on the planet.

The figure is equivalent to an average of $ 85 per day that he was deprived of liberty since his conviction in 1968, a sum that, although historical for his magnitude in the Japanese context, has been qualified by his defense as insufficient to repair the irreversible damage caused. His lawyer, Hideyo Ogawa, has argued that the State committed An unforgivable error and that no amount of money can restore the life that was taken away.

Context of a devastating nonsense. THE HISTORY LA We count a while ago. In 1966 the police found in a house in Shizuoka, west of Tokyo, the bodies of a man, his wife and the two teenage children. They had died staggered. The boy was at the forefront of a miso plant and the investigations ended up pointing to one of his employees, a 30 -year -old ex -box. His name: IWAO HAKAMADA.

The arrest. Two months after homicides and fire, to Hakamada They arrested him. The man was subjected to extensive interrogations that included blows and threats, which resulted in a confession that he later denounced as forced. In two years the sentence arrived. The Shizuoka District Court declared him guilty of crimes and condemned him to the maximum penalty: The HORCA. In his case there were two key tests: a confession and several bloody garments that allegedly belonged to Hakamada.

The agents had taken to contribute them to the case because they did not find them up to a year after the detention of the boxer, hidden in a miso tank. The dissident judge, deeply affected by the final decision, resigned from his position Six months later, unable to live with the ruling. Since then, Hakamada has sustained his innocence unwaveringly.

Genetic tests. The case began to turn in 2014, when they appeared New DNA tests which showed that the bloody garments used as a key test in the trial had been manipulated and possibly placed on the scene after the crime.

These findings led to their release that same year, although the final acquittal would not reach until March 2023 and the sentence last year, when the Shizuoka court finally He declared him innocent. The resolution was held as A judicial milestonealthough he could not be witnessed by Hakamada, whose mental health is seriously deteriorated because of the decades of confinement, to the point of living, according to his sister Hideko, “in her own world” without contact with reality.

Criticism of the Japanese system. The exboxer’s case has exposed the world structural deficiencies of the Japanese criminal justice system, where condemnation rates They exceed 99%largely due to the dependence of confessions obtained under pressure. Its history has also revitalized the debate on the Validity of the death penalty and the need for deep reforms in the country’s criminal proceedings.

The prolonged wait for a judicial review, the initial refusal to accept exculpatory evidence and the lack of effective mechanisms to prevent abuses have turned this case into An international symbol of the devastating potential of judicial errors. Although the magnitude of the compensation received represents an official recognition of the injustice suffered, it seems impossible to reverse the decades of isolation, mental deterioration or the loss of a full life.

Image | Christian Senger

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