Iwao Hakamada

Iwao Hakamada was born March 10, 1936, in Yūtō Town, Japan.

From 1959 to 1961, Hakamada fought in 29 professional boxing matches.

A featherweight, he was ranked as high as sixth in his weight class.

He finished his career with a 16–11–2 record, including one win by TKO.

All of his losses were on points.

After his boxing career, he worked at a Shizuoka-based miso manufacturer.

On June 30, 1966, there was a fire at the home of one of Hakamada's bosses.

According to Hakamada, he helped extinguish the fire only to find the bodies of the executive, his wife, and two children, all stabbed to death.

About ¥200,000 in cash was stolen from the victims' residence.

Hakamada was interrogated and, in August 1966, he was arrested based on his confession and a tiny amount of blood and gasoline found on a pair of pajamas he owned.

According to his lawyers, Hakamada was interrogated a total of 264 hours, for as many as 16 hours a session, over 23 days to obtain the confession.

They added that he was denied water or toilet breaks during the interrogation.

At his trial, Hakamada retracted the confession, saying police had kicked and clubbed him to obtain it, and pleaded not guilty.

"'I could do nothing but crouch down on the floor trying to keep from defecating,' he later told his sister. 'One of the interrogators put my thumb onto an ink pad, drew it to a written confession record and ordered me, 'Write your name here!' [while] shouting at me, kicking me and wrenching my arm.'"Prosecutors put aside the pajamas and instead presented five pieces of bloody clothing that were found in a tank at the miso factory in August 1967, 14 months after the crime.

They argued that the clothing came from the killer and said police had found the blood types of the victims on the clothing.

They argued that Hakamada must have murdered the family in these clothes and then changed into pajamas to commit the arson.

Hakamada supporters said the case was full of holes, arguing that the alleged murder weapon – a fruit knife with a 12.19 cm blade – could not have withstood the forty stabbings of the victims without sustaining significant damage, and that the pajamas used to justify the arrest had disappeared and been replaced with the bloody clothing.

The clothes were too small for Hakamada but the prosecution argued they had shrunk in the miso tank and the label had a "B" or medium size label on it which would have fitted Hakamada.

However the B indicated the colour Black not the size.

The blood stains on the clothes were too dark and the colour of the clothes too light to have been lying in the miso tank.

The Shizuoka District Court discounted part of Hakamada's confession and chided the police for their interrogation tactics.

Iwao Hakamada (袴田 巖) is a Japanese former professional boxer who was sentenced to death on September 11, 1968, for a 1966 mass murder that became known as the Hakamada Incident. On March 10, 2011, Guinness World Records certified Hakamada as the world's longest-held death row inmate.

But, on September 11, 1968, the three-judge panel found Hakamada guilty and sentenced him to death.

The Japan Pro Boxing Association alleged that prejudice against boxers was involved, and said the principle of innocent until proven guilty had been violated because of rampant press reports declaring Hakamada guilty.

A subsequent appeal to the Tokyo High Court was denied and the Supreme Court of Japan upheld the death sentence on November 11, 1980.

After his appeal was denied in 1980, Hakamada obtained a new team of lawyers.

In 1981, they filed a request for a retrial, asking for the physical evidence to be re-examined.

In the investigation, it was determined the alleged murder weapon was the wrong size to produce the stab wounds, that a door supposedly used to enter the home was actually locked, and that the bloody pants were too small to have been worn by Hakamada.

Backed by the Japanese Federation of Bar Associations (JFBA), Hakamada's lawyers concluded the first trial had failed to establish that any of the clothing belonged to him.

Hakamada maintained his innocence, writing to his son in 1983: "I will prove to you that your dad never killed anybody, and it is the police who know it best and it is the judges who feel sorry. I will break this iron chain and return to you."

Although Hakamada remained on death row, he was not executed because the Minister of Justice refused to sign his death warrant, suspecting that the conviction was not certain.

Like most death row inmates, Hakamada was placed in solitary confinement throughout his prison stay.

He was not permitted to talk to guards, and rarely allowed visitors.

Hakamda has served nearly 50 years on death row and 30 of those years were spent in solitary confinement.

After 13 years of gathering evidence, the request was heard and denied by the Shizuoka District Court on August 9, 1994.

In 2000, an attempt was made to extract DNA from the bloody clothing, but available techniques did not allow for any to be detected.

He has an older sister, Hideko; his older brother Shigeji died in 2001.

The Tokyo High Court upheld the retrial denial on August 27, 2004.

In November 2006, 500 supporters including world champion boxers Koichi Wajima and Katsuo Tokashiki submitted letters to the Supreme Court asking for a retrial.

In March 2014, he was granted a retrial and an immediate release when the Shizuoka district court found there was reason to believe evidence against him had been falsified.