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SUB-HEADING: "Iwao Hakamada was on death row for nearly six decades after his murder conviction that his lawyers said was based on forced confession.
GIST: "A Japanese police chief has apologised in person to a man who spent 50 years on death row for a quadruple murder, but was acquitted last month.
Iwao Hakamada, a former boxer, was acquitted by the Shizuoka District Court, which said police and prosecutors had collaborated to fabricate and plant evidence against him, and forced him to confess with violent closed interrogations.
The acquittal was finalised when the prosecution waved its right to appeal, ending Hakamada's near 60-year legal battle to prove his innocence.
Shizuoka Prefectural Police Chief Takayoshi Tsuda visited the 88-year-old Hakamada at his home and offered an apology in person.
“We are sorry to have caused you unspeakable mental distress and burden for as long as 58 years from the time of the arrest until the acquittal was finalised,” Tsuda said, as he stood in front of Hakamada and then bowed deeply.
“We are terribly sorry,” Tsuda added, promising a “meticulous and appropriate investigation.”
Hakamada, who has difficulty carrying out conversation due to his mental condition from the decades of death row confinement, responded: “What it means to have the authority ... Once you have the power, you’re not supposed to grumble.”
Hakamada’s 91-year-old sister, who had stood by her brother and now lives with him, thanked the police chief for visiting them.
“There is no use complaining to him after all these years. He was not involved in the case and he only came here as his duty,” she told reporters afterward. “But I still accepted his visit just because I wanted (my brother) to have a clear break from his past as a death row inmate.”
Hakamada was arrested in August 1966, in the killing of an executive at a miso bean paste company and three of his family members in Hamamatsu, central Japan.
He was initially sentenced to death in a 1968 district court ruling but was not executed because of the lengthy appeal and retrial process in Japan.
It took nearly three decades for the Supreme Court to deny his first appeal for a re-trial. His second appeal for a re-trial, filed by his sister in 2008, was granted in 2014. The court ordered his release from his death row solitary cell but without removing his conviction, pending the retrial process.
Hakamada was the world’s longest-serving death row prisoner and only the fifth death row inmate to be acquitted in a retrial in postwar Japan, where criminal trials take years and retrials are extremely rare.
His case and acquittal have triggered calls for more transparency in the investigation, legal change to lower hurdles for a retrial and debate over death penalty in Japan."
The entire story can be read at:
https://www.itv.com/news/2024-10-22/japanese-man-receives-apology-after-wrongly-spending-over-50-yearsPUBLISHER'S NOTE: I am monitoring this case/issue/resource. Keep your eye on the Charles Smith Blog for reports on developments. The Toronto Star, my previous employer for more than twenty incredible years, has put considerable effort into exposing the harm caused by Dr. Charles Smith and his protectors - and into pushing for reform of Ontario's forensic pediatric pathology system. The Star has a "topic" section which focuses on recent stories related to Dr. Charles Smith. It can be found at: http://www.thestar.com/topic/charlessmith. Information on "The Charles Smith Blog Award"- and its nomination process - can be found at: http://smithforensic.blogspot.com/2011/05/charles-smith-blog-award-nominations.html Please send any comments or information on other cases and issues of interest to the readers of this blog to: hlevy15@gmail.com. Harold Levy: Publisher: The Charles Smith Blog.
- SEE BREAKDOWN OF SOME OF THE ON-GOING INTERNATIONAL CASES (OUTSIDE OF THE CONTINENTAL USA) THAT I AM FOLLOWING ON THIS BLOG, AT THE LINK BELOW: HL:
https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/120008354894645705/4704913685758792985
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FINAL WORD: (Applicable to all of our wrongful conviction cases): "Whenever there is a wrongful conviction, it exposes errors in our criminal legal system, and we hope that this case — and lessons from it — can prevent future injustices."
Lawyer Radha Natarajan:
Executive Director: New England Innocence Project;
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FINAL, FINAL WORD: "Since its inception, the Innocence Project has pushed the criminal legal system to confront and correct the laws and policies that cause and contribute to wrongful convictions. They never shied away from the hard cases — the ones involving eyewitness identifications, confessions, and bite marks. Instead, in the course of presenting scientific evidence of innocence, they've exposed the unreliability of evidence that was, for centuries, deemed untouchable." So true!
Christina Swarns: Executive Director: The Innocence Project;
