A Japanese death-row inmate, the world's longest-serving death row prisoner walked away a free man Thursday, after 48 years in jail. A local court expressed doubts over the evidence used to convict him.
Iwao Hakamada, 78, was accused of murdering four people that included two children in 1966. Hakamada maintained his innocence about the crime.
He pled guilty for a brief period but retracted the statement later. He was given the death sentence in 1968. Hakamada was in his 30s at the time. Japan's Supreme Court upheld the decision in 1980, reports Reuters. He is now diagnosed with dementia.
The Supreme Court denied his first appeal for retrial after 27 years. He filed a second appeal in 2008 that the court accepted Thursday. "It is unbearably unjust to prolong detention of the defendant any further," said presiding judge Hiroaki Murayama in a ruling statement, reports the Associated Press. "The possibility of his innocence has become clear to a respectable degree."
The court agreed with Hakamada's lawyers that the DNA results found on five blood-stained clothing were tampered. The lawyers had also argued that the trousers submitted by the prosecutors for DNA were too small for Hakamada.
Hakamado's sister Hideko asked the court to clear his name of all the charges and welcomed the ruling. "I want to see him as soon as I can and tell him, 'You really persevered,'" she told reporters at a news conference, reports Mirror. "I want to tell him that very soon now, he will be free."
Prosecutors said they would appeal the ruling.
Japan and the United States are the only two of the Group of Seven nations that give capital punishment. The death sentence is majorly supported in Japan, reports Reuters. Death row inmates are executed by hanging and prisoners do not know the date until the morning of the day they are executed.
For decades, Japan refused to announce that it carried out capital sentences.
