The World's longest serving death row inmate (45 years) to be released after it's revealed he was innocent

 

A Japanese court has ordered the release of the world’s longest serving death row inmate because the evidence was likely made up by investigators.
According to Dailymail,Iwao Hakamada, 78, a former professional boxer convicted of the 1966 murder of a family, has spent the last 45 years behind bars on death row, a Guinness World Record – including 30 years in solitary confinement waiting to die.The court ordered a retrial for Mr Hakamada, who was sentenced to death in 1968, but was not executed because of a lengthy appeals process.
It took 27 years for the Supreme Court to deny his first appeal for a retrial. He filed a second appeal in 2008, and the court finally ruled in his favour today.
The court said DNA analysis obtained by Mr Hakamada's lawyers suggested that investigators had fabricated evidence.

 

There has long been speculation he was innocent, and in 2007 one of the three judges who originally convicted him publicly declared he had thought Mr Hakamada was innocent
Amnesty International claimed earlier this year that new DNA tests undertaken in 2012 point to Mr Hakamada’s innocence.
His sister who has spent years fighting for her innocence said she was worried about the mental state of her brother, who now ‘talks nonsense’.

‘What I am worried about most is Iwao's health. If you put someone in jail for 47 years, it's too much to expect them to stay sane..I truly believe Iwao didn't do it. But once police suspect you for a crime, that's the end of the story. It was like that back then, it is like that now.’