He’s the world’s longest-serving death row inmate. A court just declared him innocent

Tokyo CNN —

A pair of blood-spattered trousers in a miso tank and an allegedly forced confession helped send Iwao Hakamata to death row in the 1960s.

Now, more than five decades later, the world’s longest-serving death row prisoner has been declared innocent, according to public broadcaster NHK.

A Japanese court on Thursday acquitted 88-year-old Hakamata, who was wrongfully sentenced to death in 1968 for murdering a family, marking the end of a marathon legal saga that’s brought global scrutiny to Japan’s criminal justice system and fueled calls to abolish the death penalty in the country.

Judge Kunii Tsuneishi of the Shizuoka District Court ruled the blood stained clothing which was used to convict Hakamata was planted long after the murders,NHK reported.

“The court cannot accept the fact that the blood stain would remain reddish if it had been soaked in miso for more than a year. The bloodstains were processed and hidden in the tank by the investigating authorities after a considerable period of time since the incident,” Tsuneishi said.

“Mr. Hakamata cannot be considered the criminal.”

Hakamata, pictured here in 1957, was briefly a professional boxer. Decades after his retirement, his former boxing association has organized demonstrations in support of a retrial.

Once a professional boxer, Hakamata retired in 1961 and got a job at a soybean processing plant in Shizuoka, central Japan – a choice that would mar the rest of his life.

When Hakamata’s boss, his boss’s wife, and their two children were found stabbed to death in their home in June five years later, Hakamata, then a divorcée who also worked at a bar, became the police’s prime suspect.

After days of relentless questioning, Hakamata initially admitted to