SCOTT DETROW, HOST:
An 88-year-old Japanese former pro boxer has won the fight of his life, but at a terrible cost. He's cleared his name after spending nearly a half-century on death row for a murder he didn't commit. As NPR's Anthony Kuhn reports, until his release a decade ago, he was the world's longest-serving death-row prisoner.
ANTHONY KUHN, BYLINE: Iwao Hakamada was convicted of murdering four people in 1966 and sentenced to death two years later. He spent nearly 48 years in jail, more than 45 of them on death row. A court in Shizuoka City acquitted him last month after a retrial. This week, prosecutors declined to appeal the acquittal. Hakamada's ordeal has left him mentally unfit to attend court hearings. His 91-year-old sister, Hideko, told reporters she's still trying to help him make sense of what's happened.
HIDEKO: (Through interpreter) He's still in a world of delusions now. I think he half believes it's true, half thinks it's a lie. By showing him newspapers and so on, I am trying to gradually get him to believe it or to understand that he's been found completely innocent.
KUHN: Hakamada was convicted of stabbing to death his boss, the man's wife and two kids, setting fire to their home and stealing their cash. But in 2014, a judge concluded that investigators could have fabricated evidence against Hakamada. He was released from jail and given a retrial. One of Hakamada's lawyers, Mitsuhiro Hazama, says police interrogation of his client was tantamount to torture.
MITSUHIRO HAZAMA: (Through interpreter) In a sense, you could say he was put in a condition which was even more cruel and inhumane than actual capital punishment.
KUHN: Hazama is calling for legal reforms to prevent further travesties of justice. For example, he wants more accountability for Japan's powerful public prosecutors. When they think they've got their man or woman, there's no going back, he says. Criminal cases in Japan have a 99% conviction rate. This is only the fifth death sentence to end in a retrial and acquittal since World War II.
HAZAMA: (Through interpreter) The police and prosecutors were obsessed with their own sense of justice and responsibility. They had to find and punish the culprit at all costs.
KUHN: Hazama adds that public opinion and media have played a key role in the case, although they both flip-flopped.
HAZAMA: (Through interpreter) Citizens' voices were two-sided. First, there were voices wanting to make him the culprit. But this time, they became a driving force against the prosecutor's appeal and to confirm his innocence.
KUHN: Japan is the only member of the G7 group of industrialized democracies other than the U.S., that still has the death penalty. Hakamada's case has renewed calls to scrap it.
Anthony Kuhn, NPR News, Seoul.
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