THE world’s longest-serving death row inmate has been acquitted more than 50 years after he was sentenced.
Former boxer Iwao Hakamada, 88, was jailed in 1968 for quadruple murder and has spent 56 year waiting to be executed.
Iwao Hakamada, 88, has been acquitted[/caption]
The former boxer was jailed for murder[/caption]
But today, a Japanese court has ruled Hakamada was not guilty in a retrial – reversing an earlier wrongful conviction after decades on death row.
His acquittal by the Shizuoka District Court makes him the fifth death-row convict to be found not guilty in a retrial in postwar Japanese criminal justice.
Hakamada was convicted of murder in the 1966 killing of a company manager and three of his family members, and setting a fire to their central Japan home.
He was sentenced to death in 1968, but was not executed due to lengthy appeals and the retrial process.
