A Japanese man wrongly convicted of murder and recognized as the world’s longest-serving death row inmate has been awarded $1.4 million in compensation, an official confirmed on Tuesday.
The payout amounts to 12,500 yen ($83) per day for the more than four decades that Iwao Hakamada spent in detention—most of it on death row, where he faced the daily possibility of execution.
Exoneration After Decades of Injustice
Hakamada, a former boxer now aged 89, was exonerated last year of a 1966 quadruple murder, following a relentless campaign by his sister and supporters.
The Shizuoka District Court, in a decision dated Monday, ruled that “the claimant shall be granted 217,362,500 yen,” a court spokesman said.
This comes after the same court ruled in September that Hakamada was not guilty, declaring that police had tampered with evidence in his original trial. The court also noted that Hakamada had endured “inhumane interrogations meant to force a confession”, which he later retracted.
Record Compensation, But Justice Still Incomplete
The $1.4 million payout is reportedly a record amount for a wrongful conviction case in Japan. However, Hakamada’s legal team argues that no amount of money can truly compensate for the decades of suffering he endured.
Spending over 40 years on death row had a severe impact on Hakamada’s mental health, with his lawyers describing him as “living in a world of fantasy” due to the trauma.
Hakamada is only the fifth death row inmate in Japan’s post-war history to be granted a retrial—all of whom were ultimately exonerated.
