By Louis Dai
Production year: 2019
Runtime: 01h12
When conviction is guaranteed, justice is lost.
On the 30th of June, 1966, in a small country-side town in Japan, four members of the Hashimoto family are stabbed and burnt to death in their family home. The savagery of the crime shakes the country and shortly after, 30-year-old retired boxer Iwao Hakamada is arrested, convicted and sentenced to death. Despite a lack of evidence, Hakamada would remain on death row for almost half a century before being granted a retrial in 2014.
HAKAMADA: THE LONGEST-HELD DEATH-ROW INMATE IN THE WORLD reveals the human cost of Japan’s 99.9% conviction rate, through the plight of Iwao Hakamada and sister Hideko’s 47-year-long battle to save him from execution. This important expose – featuring an astonishing confession from a former judge – shows us that a ‘perfect’ justice system is anything but…