Japanese Boxer Wrongfully Convicted Of Murder Receives $1.4M Compensation

A Japanese man who was wrongfully convicted of murder and spent over four decades on death row has been awarded $1.4 million in compensation, a court official confirmed on Tuesday, March 25.

The compensation equates to 12,500 yen ($83) for each day that 89-year-old Iwao Hakamada spent in detention, marking the highest payout of its kind in Japan, according to local media reports.

Hakamada, a former boxer, was exonerated last year for a 1966 quadruple murder after relentless campaigning by his sister and supporters. His case garnered international attention to Japan’s criminal justice system, where retrials are rare and death row inmates often receive execution notices just hours before they are carried out.

In a decision dated Monday, the Shizuoka District Court ruled that “the claimant shall be granted 217,362,500 yen ($1.44 million),” a court spokesperson told AFP.

The same court had acquitted Hakamada in September, ruling that police had tampered with evidence. The court also noted that he had endured “inhumane interrogations meant to force a statement (confession),” which he later retracted.

Hakamada’s legal team acknowledged the compensation but argued that it was inadequate, considering the suffering he endured from his arrest in 1966 to his release in 2014 when he was granted a retrial.

“I think the fact that he will receive it… compensates him a little bit for all the hardship,” lawyer Hideyo Ogawa told reporters.

“But in light of the hardship and suffering of the past 47 or 48 years, and given his current situation, I think it shows that the state has made mistakes that cannot be atoned for with 200 million yen,” he added.

Decades on death row—living under the constant threat of execution—have taken a severe toll on Hakamada’s mental health, with his lawyers describing him as “living in a world of fantasy.”

Hakamada was convicted of robbing and murdering his boss, the man’s wife, and their two teenage children. While he initially denied the charges, police claimed he later confessed.

During his trial, he insisted on his innocence, stating that his confession had been coerced. More than a year after the murders, investigators presented blood-stained clothes as key evidence—evidence that the court later ruled had been planted by authorities.

Now living with his sister, Hakamada receives support from activists and legal advocates. He is the fifth death row inmate in Japan’s post-war history to be granted a retrial, with all four previous cases also resulting in exoneration.

Japan remains one of the few industrialized nations, alongside the United States, that upholds capital punishment—a policy that enjoys broad public support. Following Hakamada’s acquittal, Japan’s justice minister reaffirmed in October that abolishing the death penalty would be “inappropriate.”