Japan Awards Iwao Hakamada Compensation

Iwao Hakamata, a Japanese man who was the world's longest-serving death row inmate, has been awarded $1.4 million (217 million yen) in compensation. This payout, ordered by the Japan — Shizuoka District Court, is for the more than four decades he spent in detention, most of it on death row, after being wrongly convicted of a 1966 quadruple murder. Iwao Hakamata was exonerated last year after a retrial found him not guilty and concluded that police had tampered with evidence and subjected him to inhumane interrogations. His legal team, including Hideyo Ogawa, stated that while the compensation is a record for Japan, it does not fully atone for the suffering Iwao Hakamata endured. The case has brought significant scrutiny to Japan's justice system, particularly its capital punishment policy and the difficulty of obtaining retrials.