Exonerated Japanese inmate wins $1.44M for decades served on death row
March 25 (UPI) -- An 89-year-old Japanese man who spent nearly half a century on death row for a 1966 quadruple murder before being exonerated last year was awarded a record $1.44 million in compensation on Tuesday.
Iwao Hakamata was found guilty in 1968 for the June 30, 1966, stabbing deaths of four people. However, a retrial last year threw out his conviction after ruling that evidence incriminating him was fabricated by police.
On Tuesday, the Shizuoka District Court on Japan's southern coast ordered the government to pay Hakamata the sum in compensation for his decades of wrongful detention.
The judge, Kunii Koshi, said Hakamata had suffered "extremely severe" mental and physical pain caused by his imprisonment, the BBC reported.
Local media reported that the $1.44 million is a record compensation amount.
The ruling comes in one of Japan's longest legal battles.
Hakamata served 47 years in prison, 33 of which were on death row, making him the holder of the Guiness World Record for the longest time spent on death row.
The former boxer was acquitted in September after the Shizuoka District Court ruled his confession was forced and that evidence was fabricated on at least three occasions.
Among the fabricated evidence was bloodstained clothing that had been found 4 months after the killings in a miso barrel at the factory where Hakamata worked. The court ruled it had been created and planted by police, with Hakamata's legal representatives arguing in court that the clothing would have been stained if it had been stashed in a miso barrel for so long.
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