The world’s longest-serving death row inmate acquitted in Japan mulls suing the government

TOKYO (AP) — A lawyer for the world’s longest-serving death row inmate — who was acquitted in a Japan ese retrial last week of a 1966 quadruple murder — said Tuesday that the defense team is considering filing a damage suit against the government over the fabrication of evidence that ruined the man’s life and his mental health by keeping him in prison for 48 years.

Iwao Hakamada, an 88-year-old former boxer, was found not guilty last Thursday by the Shizuoka District Court which concluded that police and prosecutors collaborated in fabricating and planting evidence against him. The court said he was forced into confession by violent, hours-long closed interrogations.

The acquittal made him the fifth death row inmate to be found not guilty in a retrial in postwar Japan, where prosecutors have a more than 99% conviction rate and retrials are extremely rare.

Hakamada was convicted of murder in the 1966 killing of an executive and three of his family members, and setting fire to their home in central Japan. He was sentenced to death in 1968 but was not executed, due to the lengthy appeal and retrial process in Japan’s notoriously slow-paced criminal justice system.

He spent more than 45 years on death row — making him the world’s longest-serving death row inmate, according to Amnesty International.

Hakamada is entitled to receive compensation of up to about 200 million yen ($1.4 million) when prosecutors accept the ruling, making the acquittal final. His lawyer Hideyo Ogawa told reporters that the defense team is also considering filing a damage suit against the government because investigators and the police collaborated in fabricating evidence, despite knowing fully well that it could send the man to the gallows and that