Japan court orders retrial for the world’s longest serving death row inmate

Tokyo’s high court has ordered a retrial for an 87-year-old former boxer who has been on death row for more than five decades after his lawyers said his murder conviction was based on a forced confession and fabricated evidence. Iwao Hakamada spent a total of 48 years in prison, more than 45 of them on death row.

His supporters say Hakamada’s mental health has suffered greatly as a result of his lengthy detention, which has been spent in large part in solitary confinement in constant fear of execution. 

Surveys conducted by the Japanese government show an overwhelming majority of the public support executions.

Executions are carried out in secrecy in Japan and prisoners are not informed of their fate until the morning they are hanged.

Since 2007, Japan has begun disclosing the names of those executed and some details of their crimes, but disclosures are still limited.

To read more, see this article by the ABC.