After being sentenced to death and serving 48 years in prison, an elderly Japanese man was set free after being acquitted of murdering his former employer and three members of the victim’s family.

Now 88, former boxer Iwao Hakamata is known to be the longest serving death row inmate in the world.

Now, decades later, on Thursday (September 26),, Judge Kunii Tsuneish of Shizuoka District Court, ruled that evidence against Hakamata has been fabricated. He was innocent.

The new judgement came 58 years after Hakamata languished in prison, most of the time on death row.

In 1966, Hakamata was falsely charged with quadruple murder and arson when his boss and three of his family members; wife and two children, was found dead in their own home. Afterwards, the house was set on fire.

With the court upholding the legality of Hakamata’s confession and noting that he wore a pair of bloodied trousers, the accused was convicted for the crime and sentenced to die.

However, Hakamata later changed his plea, claiming that he was coerced to confess as a result of the physical harm inflicted on him by the police.

Notwithstanding Hakamata’s claim, the three-man judiciary voted two against one to convict him.

In 2014, the blood found on the trousers presented as evidence was found to not match his DNA or any of his alleged victims. It did not even fit him, according to prosecutors.

In the same year, he was released and sent to home prison as his weakening body and old age would have prevented him from escaping.

In 2023, Japan’s Supreme Court granted him another chance to appeal in court— a rare occurrence in Japan, after legal experts took the matter into their own hands.

The bloodstained trousers, crucial in Hakamata's conviction, were later found to be planted. Tsuneishi said that they do not believe that a blood stain would remain fresh after it had been soaked in miso while hidden in a tank for more than a year.

As per Chiara Sangiorgio, Death Penalty Advisor at Amnesty International stated that Hakamata’s case was a symbol of the many faults in the justice system in Japan.