Iwao Hakamata is 88 years old, 46 of which have been spent on death row with the fear of being hanged every morning. This ex-professional boxer was sentenced to death in 1968 on suspicion of a quadruple murder committed in 1966. His sentence was confirmed in 1980, but he finally obtained last year, after a 57-year fight, the review of his trial.
This is what has been playing out since last October at the Shizuoka court, southwest of Tokyo. The debates took place without any witnesses or investigators at the time. The prosecutors, very young, maintain with disconcerting aplomb that Iwao is guilty and must be executed. His lawyers demand his acquittal.
If the trial review takes place, it is thanks to the unwavering perseverance of the sister of this death row inmate, Hideko Hakamata, 91 years old. “The prosecutors refute our arguments, but we feel that they do so with painshe says. We have already crossed one, two or three mountains. It is thanks to you that we are here, to your support in this long trial, thank you all.”
Hideko Hakamata doesn’t give up, has incredible optimism, and is sure to exonerate her little brother, whom she has already managed to get out of prison so that he can live with her.
This affair has been going on for more than half a century. The legal procedures to obtain a trial review are atrociously long, inhumanely long. In fact, poor Iwao, like most death row inmates locked up for years or decades, has lost his mind. He is not aware of what is happening to him.
But he has 25 lawyers at his side to extract his acquittal from the judges and fight against the death penalty. One of them, Hideyo Ogawa, who has defended him for almost forty years, will not be satisfied with an acquittal if necessary. He wants more for his client : “This time I became certain that the court would pronounce an acquittal. I am also convinced that we must fight to the end to have the illegality of the investigation methods recognized and to bring to light the reasons for that this case is a miscarriage of justice.”
There are two court sessions remaining before the verdict, which will fall during the summer. But this will undoubtedly not be the end of this Hakamata affair, in a Japan where already four other death row inmates have been exonerated at the last minute.
