TOKYO — Japan's legal system faces an opportunity for scrutiny and reform after 88-year-old former boxer Iwao Hakamada, the world's longest serving death row inmate, was acquitted of murder on Thursday.
Hakamada was arrested in 1966 for killing a company executive and three of the man's family members in Shizuoka Prefecture earlier that year. Although he pleaded not guilty, he was sentenced to death in 1968. In 1980, the Supreme Court of Japan rejected his appeal.