Japan to award Iwao Hakamada, held wrongfully for close to 50 years and released last year, largest-ever payout.

Japan has awarded a wrongly convicted man who was on death row for close to half a century compensation of 217 million yen ($1.44m).

The legal team for Iwao Hakamada, released last year after his conviction for a 1966 murder was quashed, said on Tuesday that the compensation payment ordered by a court the previous day was the highest-ever criminal compensation granted in Japan.

The former boxer, now 89, was awarded 12,500 yen ($83) for each day of the 46 years he spent in detention, most of it on death row. He was exonerated in a retrial last year over the 1966 quadruple murder of his former employer and family.

Following a tireless campaign by his sister and others, the Shizuoka district court ruled that police had tampered with the evidence and overturned Hakamada’s conviction.

He had initially confessed to the crime but retracted the confession during his first trial, claiming to have been abused during 20 days of interrogation.

‘World of fantasy’

Hakamada’s legal team has said the money falls far short of compensating for the pain he suffered. The world’s longest-serving death row inmate spent most of his time in solitary confinement.

Decades of detention – with the threat of execution constantly looming – took a heavy toll on Hakamada’s mental health, his lawyers have said, describing him as “living in a world of fantasy”.

Hakamada was the fifth death row inmate granted a retrial in Japan’s post-war history. All four previous cases also resulted in exonerations.

Japan is the only leading industrialised democracy other than the United States to retain capital punishment, a policy that has broad public support.