Prosecutors conveyed to a Japanese court Monday that they will argue for the conviction of a man in his retrial for a 1966 quadruple murder in central Japan that will take place decades after his death sentence was finalized.
Iwao Hakamata, 87, spent nearly half a century behind bars before new evidence led to his release in 2014. Although his defense team has said he is innocent and the upcoming retrial is expected to lead to his exoneration, the prosecutors' move is likely to increase the likelihood of a prolonged process.
The prosecutors' decision, which was conveyed to the Shizuoka District Court, where the case will be tried again, angered Hakamata's defense team.
"We can only think that they are doing this even though they know Mr. Hakamata is innocent," one of the lawyers, Hideyo Ogawa, 70, said.
The move came even though the prosecutors have decided that they would not appeal a high court order in March that granted a retrial to Hakamata. The criminal procedure law says that a retrial will be opened if there is "clear evidence to find the accused not guilty."
In March, the Tokyo High Court, which was ordered by the Supreme Court in 2020 to re-examine its 2018 decision not to reopen the case, reversed course and ordered the retrial, citing the unreliability of the main evidence used.
The high court said there was a strong possibility that five pieces of blood-stained clothing that Hakamata allegedly wore during the incident had been planted by investigators in the tank of miso soybean paste in which they were found.
The clothes were found about 14 months after the murder on June 30, 1966, but the court acknowledged that the blood stains could not have maintained the redness they had preserved if kept in miso paste for such a long time, based on experiments conducted by Hakamata's defense team.
The experiments showed that the redness should have disappeared in about a month and would have eventually turned blackish. Hakamata was arrested in August 1966.
The prosecutors said Monday in a statement submitted to the court that "it is not at all unnatural for the redness to remain" on the clothes and argued that "there is no basis" they had been planted.
Hakamata's elder sister Hideko, 90, told reporters in front of her home in Hamamatsu, Shizuoka Prefecture, "It cannot be helped because it is the prosecutors' decision. We will work hard in the trial to come."
Facing criticism that the latest decision will only prolong the trial, Yohei Okuda, deputy chief prosecutor at the Shizuoka District Public Prosecutors Office, said, "We have no intention at all to extend the process."
Hakamata was a live-in employee at a miso maker when he was arrested for allegedly killing the firm's senior managing director, his wife and two of their children. They were found fatally stabbed at their house in Shizuoka Prefecture, which had been burned down.
The former professional boxer confessed to the killings during intense interrogation but pleaded not guilty at trial.
His mental state deteriorated during his long incarceration, especially after 1980, when his death sentence was finalized by the Supreme Court.
It is the fifth time in postwar Japan that a decision for a retrial has been finalized for a case in which the death penalty had been given. The four previous cases all resulted in acquittals in the 1980s, although prosecutors tried to prove their guilt.
Related coverage:
1966 Japan murder case to reopen as prosecutors give up appeal
Tokyo court orders retrial of 1966 quadruple murder case
