The next round of Hakamada, an 87-year-old death row inmate

Boxers are always perfect culprits. Aggressive by profession. Between those who are pastry chefs and those who enter the ring, few have doubts. Do you want not to suspect them? Often simple people, unable to defend themselves outside the square (and some not even inside). Take Iwao Hakamada, a former Japanese featherweight, who is now 87 years old. The Guinness World Records in 2011 certified her record, that of being the sentenced to death longer lived. Dead man walking since 1966. The longest held prisoner in the world awaiting his execution. Iwao, released in 2014, served 48 years in prison, 30 of which in solitary confinement. Almost half a century behind bars. He entered prison as a father of two children, came out of it as an old man, full of phobias, now incapable of understanding. If on Rubin Hurricane Carter you know everything, thanks to Bob Dylan and a famous film, the story of the prisoner record holder for which many mobilized (including Amnesty) is less known. The good news is that in mid-March, the Tokyo High Court allowed a review of his trial. After 57 years, not bad. In Japan the trains will be punctual, as well as the Shinkansen, but it is clear that the magnetic levitation used for high speed does not work in justice.

In ’66 Hakamada is 30 years old and has already stopped fighting (it wasn’t a phenomenon), he works in a miso factory, on June 30th a fire destroys the house of one of the leaders. When they extinguish the flames they realize that there are four corpses: the boss, his wife and two children. And that they were stabbed first. There are also 200,000 yen missing. The former boxer is stopped in August. They interrogate him for 264 hours, 12 to 16 hours a day, in a hot room with no air conditioning. He can’t drink or go to his needs, they allow him to speak to the lawyer three times, for seven, ten, fifteen minutes. They treat him harshly. “I was lying on the ground, in pain, they bent my arm, kicked me, and forced me to sign a written confession.” Exhausted, after 21 days, he admits the crime. The extermination of a family finally has a culprit. At trial Iwao retracted: “They tortured me.”

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You will say: evidence of his involvement? A pajama with a few drops of blood and traces of petrol. First doubt: do you kill four people in a house that is not yours in pajamas? Ah yes, the murder weapon. A fruit knife, whose blade, despite the many stabs (from 6 to 15 for each body) was not damaged. In short, other doubts. As it happens, 14 months after the crime, in a barrel of miso, a fermented soy-based condiment, they find the remains of a shirt and shorts with traces of dark blood, but still light colors. The size is not that of Iwao, but the prosecution says it will be because she has shrunk in the soybean tank over time. So why not the colors? New hypothesis: Hakamada first killed and then put on his pajamas (which however disappear from the scene). Iwao writes 5,000 letters from prison, even to his mother, poetically repeating that it wasn’t him: “I pray and hope that my words will reach you through the winds of Shizuoka”.

In 1968, three judges sentenced him to death and scolded the police for his violent methods: “You don’t get confessions like that”. True, but that’s not how processes are done either. There Japan Pro Box Association protests: “Yours is a prejudice against boxers, you have no proof.” The defense appealed, but in 1980 the sentence was reconfirmed, three judges sentenced him to death. In 1981, Iwao changed the team of lawyers and asked for a review of the case: the knife was too small to have inflicted those wounds, the door through which Hakamada would have entered the house was locked, the clothes found were not the size of he. There Shizuoka Court in ’94 he denied it to him. It takes her thirteen years to say no. In the meantime, he writes to his son: “I will prove that I am innocent, I will break the iron chains and I will come back to you”. Deluded. He remains on death row, waiting every day for the end, but he is not executed because the Minister of Justice refuses to sign the order. “Too many inconsistencies”.

In 2006, the defense made a new request for a review. In March 2007 the Judge Kumamoto, one of the three who passed the sentence, resigns and reveals that he always believed Hakamada innocent. “Maybe I should have spoken earlier, I’m sorry I haven’t been able to convince my two colleagues, I will personally go to jail to bring my apologies”. They forbid it. And they also blame him for revealing news about the usually secretive justice system and the inhumanity of the interrogations. An opinion campaign is restarted, also taking part in the American boxer Rubin Hurricane Carter, who unjustly served 20 years in prison, and the English actor Jeremy Irons who fights for “the world’s longest-serving death row prisoner”. Judge Kumamoto himself calls for a new trial. In 2008, the High Court denied the request: “There is no doubt about Hakamada’s guilt.” Already, on March 10, 2011, the day of his 75th birthday, Hakamada becomes the champion of those sentenced to death, the most enduring. He won the title, what he didn’t get in the ring. In 2012 they take a blood sample for a DNA test to compare with the trace found on the killer’s shirt. He doesn’t match.

A former policeman who followed the investigation reveals: “Four days after the fact we examined that barrel of miso with a long stick, we found nothing, it is strange that a year later they discovered remains of clothing”. Iwao was released in March 2014, the Court reasoned: “Fabricated evidence, keeping a 78-year-old in prison pending a new trial is unbearably unfair”. He thus becomes the sixth Japanese death row inmate to be granted the right to return to court (four of the five were acquitted). But he can’t celebrate, he is immediately taken to the hospital. Diabetes, but above all he’s out of his mind, he’s psychotic. If for over 40 years your day can be your last, it’s the least. In June 2018, the Tokyo High Court overturned the sentence that released Hakamada: the DNA test is not admissible, the case goes back to the Supreme Court (the fourth level of judgment in the Japanese legal system), which refers it back to the High Court which three weeks ago decided: Hakamada deserves a new trial.

Do you know who fought better than a boxer in this eternity of time for him? Her sister Hideko, ninety years old, who welcomed him home (mother and brother are dead). Thanks for your patience, Iwao at 87 is waiting: he hasn’t been acquitted yet. She tells her sister that he paces the room back and forth for hours. “Like he was still in his cell.” Hurricane Carter titled his book “The 16th Round”. What doesn’t exist. That of prejudice against boxers.