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Home > Match Information > Pro boxing supporters hold rally near Tokyo Prosecutors Office, seeking Hakamada’s release

Pro boxing supporters hold rally near Tokyo Prosecutors Office, seeking Hakamada’s release

Mar 15, 2022 14:56 pm

The Japan Pro Boxing Association’s committee to support former professional boxer Iwao Hakamada, convicted in a 1966 quadruple murder case, and other supporting groups jointly held a rally in front of the Tokyo High Public Prosecutors Office on March 14, seeking withdrawal of an immediate appeal against Hakamada while seeking a retrial of the case at the Tokyo District Court.

The rally, led by Shosei Nitta, head of the Kawasaki Nitta Boxing Gym and an organizer of the JPBA’s committee to support Hakamada, was joined by Osamu Matsuoka of Shu Boxing Gym, former Oriental and Pacific Boxing Federation featherweight champion Takeo Imaoka and others.

Although Hakamada was released from the Tokyo Detention House in 2014 under a district court ruling following a 48-year detention with the retrial of the case ordered, the Tokyo High Court rejected the reopening of the case in 2018.

Hakamada, who turned 86 on March 10, had filed an appeal with the Supreme Court in which he is seeking exoneration. But the Supreme Court sent back the case to the high court in 2020.

According to the police, Hakamada stabbed to death four family members at a soybean paste shop in the prefecture on June 30, 1966 in an attempt to steal money, and them set fire to the shop after pouring gasoline on the bodies.

The main focal point between the defense and prosecution at present is the color of blood-soaked clothes, including a shirt, pants and underwear, said to be found in one of the miso (soybean paste) tanks slightly over a year after the murder case.

When they were found, the redness of the bloodstain was seen. But the defense argues about the color as it is impossible for those clothes to maintain redness as long as more than a year in the tanks.
But the prosecution side maintains redness can be retained based on its own experiments.

For its part, the defense side presented the result of the experiment at the advice of experts to prove its argument, saying the prosecution side apparently fabricated the evidence against Hakamada.

In the day’s tripartite consultation among the court, prosecution and defense, the court side expressed its intention to invite those experts who advised for the defense side in the experiment.

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