An 88-year-old man who is the worlds longest-serving death row inmate has been acquitted by a Japanese court, after it found that evidence used against him was fabricated.Iwao Hakamada, who has been on death row for more than half a century, was found guilty in 1968 of killing his boss, the mans wife and their two teenage children.He was recently granted a retrial amid suspicions that investigators may have planted evidence that led to his conviction for quadruple murder.More than half a century spent on death row has taken a heavy toll on Hakamadas mental health, though, meaning he was unfit to attend the hearing where his acquittal was finally handed down.Hakamadas case is one of Japans longest and most famous legal sagas, and has attracted widespread public interest, with some 500 people lining up for seats in the courtroom in Shizuoka on Thursday.As the verdict was handed down, Hakamadas supporters outside the court cheered banzai - a Japanese exclamation that means hurray.Hakamada, who was exempted from all hearings due to his deteriorated mental state, has been living under the care of his 91-year-old sister Hideko since 2014, when he was freed from jail and granted a retrial.He previously told the AFP news agency that his battle for justice was like fighting a bout every day.Once you think you cant win, there is no path to victory, he said.Bloodstained clothes in a tank of misoA former professional boxer, Hakamada was working at a miso processing plant in 1966 when the bodies of his employer, the mans wife and two children were recovered from a fire at their home in Shizuoka, west of Tokyo.
All four had been stabbed to death.Authorities accused Hakamada of murdering the family, setting fire to their home and stealing 200,000 yen in cash.Hakamada initially denied having robbed and murdered the victims, but later gave what he came to describe as a coerced confession following beatings and interrogations that lasted up to 12 hours a day.In 1968 he was convicted of murder and arson, and sentenced to death.The decades-long legal saga ultimately turned on some clothes found in a tank of miso a year after Hakamadas arrest.
Those clothes, purportedly bloodstained, were used to incriminate him.For years, however, Hakamadas lawyers argued that the DNA recovered from the clothes did not match his, raising the possibility that the items belonged to someone else.
The lawyers further suggested that police could have fabricated the evidence.Their argument was enough to persuade Judge Hiroaki Murayama, who in 2014 noted that the clothes were not those of the defendant.It is unjust to detain the defendant further, as the possibility of his innocence has become clear to a respectable degree, Murayama said at the time.Hakamada was then released from jail and granted a retrial.Prolonged legal proceedings meant that it took until last year for that retrial to begin - and until Thursday morning for the court to declare the verdict.While the DNA argument was quashed, the judge found another argument by defence lawyers credible - that the red stains found on the clothes could not have been blood, as blood would not remain red on clothing immersed in miso for a year.Thursdays ruling found that investigators tampered with clothes by getting blood on them which they then hid in the tank of miso, according to AFP.Hakamada was declared innocent.It is unjust to detain the defendant further, as the possibility of his innocence has become clear to a respectable degree, Murayama said at the time.Hakamada was then released from jail and granted a retrial.Prolonged legal proceedings meant that it took until last year for that retrial to begin - and until Thursday morning for the court to declare the verdict.While the DNA argument was quashed, the judge found another argument by defence lawyers credible - that the red stains found on the clothes could not have been blood, as blood would not remain red on clothing immersed in miso for a year.Thursdays ruling found that investigators tampered with clothes by getting blood on them which they then hid in the tank of miso, according to AFP.Hakamada was declared innocent.Source: BBC--Agencies