Photo/Illutration Iwao Hakamada's sister, Hideko, sits beside lawyer Hideyo Ogawa as he explains 'fabricated evidence' in Shizuoka on July 10. (Yuichi Koyama)

Defense lawyers and supporters of Iwao Hakamada expressed disgust and bewilderment over prosecutors’ decision to seek a murder conviction in the retrial of the 87-year-old who had spent decades on death row.

“We don’t know the purpose of (their decision), if it’s for the organization or for saving face, but we’re disappointed,” Hideyo Ogawa, one of the lawyers, said at a news conference in Shizuoka city on July 10.

Ogawa said prosecutors’ continued attempt to prove Hakamada’s guilt in the killing of four people in 1966 will be impossible because their arguments haven’t changed since he was granted a retrial in March.

The defense lawyer described the prosecutors’ plan as an “outrageous act against victims of false accusations.”

Hakamada was sentenced to death in 1968 after being found guilty of murdering four family members in Shizuoka Prefecture. He has consistently maintained his innocence.

In March this year, the Tokyo High Court granted him a retrial after new evidence came to light. The court also said evidence used to convict him was “likely fabricated.”

Prosecutors did not file a special appeal against the high court’s retrial order.

An acquittal is virtually certain since the Code of Criminal Procedure stipulates that “clear evidence that would lead to an acquittal” is necessary for a retrial.

However, prosecutors said they intend to prove Hakamada’s guilt at the retrial at the Shizuoka District Court.

The defense lawyers and Hideko Hakamada, Iwao’s sister, have long been seeking an early acquittal because of Hakamada’s age and health issues. They said prosecutors are just “stalling for time” by rehashing the same contentions.

“Iwao is 87 years old, and Hideko is 90 years old. How do prosecutors value people’s lives?” Ogawa said.

Hideko said of the prosecutors’ plan: “I think it’s for the convenience of the prosecutors’ office. We have no choice but to eventually win in court.”

Regarding the prolonging of the court procedures, she said, “We have been supporting (Iwao) for 57 years, so it doesn’t matter if it is extended for another two or three years.”

Iwao, who developed mental disorders during his decades behind bars, got up later than usual, around 1:30 p.m., on July 10, and went for a drive in a supporter’s car.

Five pieces of clothing that Hakamada was supposedly wearing at the time of the crime were used as the main evidence leading to the guilty verdict in 1968.

The bloodstains in the clothes, which were said to have been immersed in a miso tank for more than a year, were reddish in color.

In the Tokyo High Court in March, the defense team submitted scientific test results showing that bloodstains would turn blackish after such a long time in a miso tank.

The high court ruled there was a possibility that the evidence was not only fabricated but planted.

The defense team on July 10 announced its plan for the retrial.

The lawyers requested that the five pieces of clothing be excluded from retrial, saying, “An investigative organization, which became anxious over whether it could secure a conviction, fabricated the evidence.”

(This article was written by Hisashi Homma, Yuichi Koyama and Kaname Ohira.)

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