After a legal battle of more than 56 years, the sister saved her brother from the death penalty.
According to British Broadcasting Corporation, a Japanese court last month acquitted the world’s longest-serving death row inmate, ending Japan’s longest legal battle.
Ewao Hakamata, 81, from Hamatsu, Japan, was arrested in 1968 for the murder of four people.
Hideko Hakamata, the 91-year-old sister of Ayoyo Hakamata, who spent half her life fighting a long legal battle to prove her brother’s innocence, appeared in court as a legal assistant on her brother’s behalf.
The sister told the BBC that when Evao was told that he was being acquitted, he did not believe it at all and remained silent.
It should be noted that death row prisoners in Japan are notified only a few hours before their execution and the prisoners are always wondering if today will be their last day.
Human rights experts have long condemned such treatment as cruel and inhumane, and say it puts prisoners at risk of serious mental illness.
Iwao Hakamata spent more than half of his life in solitary confinement awaiting execution despite not having committed a crime.
According to the report, on June 30, 1966, the bodies of his boss, his wife and two teenage children were found stabbed to death at the processing plant where Evao worked.
A year and two months after the incident in 1968, Iwao Hakamata’s clothes were found near the crime scene and he was implicated in the murder.
Iwao Hakamata was sentenced to death in 1980 after authorities accused him of murdering the four men, setting their house on fire, and stealing 200,000 yen in cash.
Iwao Hakamata filed a motion for retrial in 1981, which was denied, and filed a second motion in 2008.
The Shizuka District Court granted his request for a retrial in 2014, and Hakamata was released that year, but the case was retrialed in 2023.
After the case was finally decided last month in September 2024 after re-hearing, presiding judge Koshi Kini ruled that the clothes were processed and hidden by the investigating authorities, which indicated that the evidence was fabricated. were
