An 88-year-old former Japanese boxer was on Thursday acquitted of the 1966 murders of his boss and the boss’s family, reversing his wrongful conviction and bringing to an.
An 88-year-old former Japanese boxer was on Thursday acquitted of the 1966 murders of his boss and the boss’s family, reversing his wrongful conviction and bringing to an end a long legal saga, the AP reports. Iwao Hakamada spent 48 years imprisoned before he was released in 2014, when a retrial was first ordered, to continue serving his sentence at home.
Amnesty International calls him the world’s longest-serving death row inmate—but Iwao Hakamada now has a shot at leaving prison. The 87-year-old has been granted a retrial in the case that saw him sentenced to death some 55 years ago, in 1968. Hakamada said he only confessed to robbing and murdering his boss and the man’s family in 1966 after 20 days of questioning, during which he claims he was beaten, reports the BBC.
