Historic compensation: Japan awards $1.44 million to wrongly convicted man

Al Jazeera reveals in a fresh article that Japan has granted Iwao Hakamada, who endured almost five decades on death row for a crime he didn’t commit, a compensation of 217 million yen ($1.44 million) for his wrongful conviction.

The decision, announced by his legal team, marks the largest criminal compensation ever granted in the country.

Hakamada, now 89 years old, was exonerated last year after his 1966 conviction for the quadruple murder of his former employer and their family was overturned. He had spent most of the 46 years of his detention on death row. The Shizuoka district court, after a lengthy campaign by Hakamada's sister and others, ruled that police had tampered with evidence, leading to his wrongful conviction.

For each of the 46 years he spent in custody, Hakamada has been awarded 12,500 yen ($83) per day. His case received widespread attention as he became the longest-serving death row inmate in the world. Though Hakamada initially confessed to the crime, he later retracted his statement, claiming he had been subjected to 20 days of harsh interrogation, which his legal team asserts led to a false confession.

Hakamada’s legal team emphasized that the compensation falls short of addressing the profound emotional and psychological trauma he endured. They described his mental state as severely impacted by the prolonged confinement, with Hakamada living in a “world of fantasy” due to the constant threat of execution and years spent in solitary confinement.

Hakamada’s retrial made him the fifth death row inmate in post-war Japan to have their conviction overturned. The previous four cases also resulted in exonerations.

Japan remains one of the few major industrialized nations, alongside the United States, that still upholds the death penalty, a policy that enjoys broad public support despite ongoing debates about its morality and effectiveness.

By Naila Huseynova