About 50 volunteers, including many former world champions, attended a gathering in front of the Tokyo High Court in the Kasumigaseki area on Feb. 6, calling for a withdrawal of an appeal against former professional boxer Iwao Hakamada in accordance with Japan Pro Boxing Association’s committee to call for ‘’Free Hakamada’’ movement.

Undefeated former World Boxing Organization flyweight champion Junto Nakatani of M.T Boxing Gym spoke through a microphone, ‘’I really hope the retrial of the case will be launched so that he will get a not-guilty ruling. I will continue to make humble efforts from now on, too. I felt more passion for the support today compared with before.’’

The fate of Hakamada, who was convicted in a 1966 quadruple murder case but was released from the Tokyo Detention House in 2014 under a district court ruling and demanded an immediate launching of a retrial of the case at the high court, will be decided on March 13 by the court following the end of the relevant inquiries last December, according to sources close to Hakamada’s legion of lawyers.

Hakamada, who will turn 87 on March 10, had filed an appeal with the Supreme Court in which he is seeking exoneration. But the court sent back the case to the high court in 2020. Though Hakamada was not taken into custody because of his old age, he is still stigmatized as a death-row inmate.

According to the then police, Hakamada stabbed to death four family members at a soybean paste shop in Shizuoka Prefecture, central Japan, on June 30, 1966 in an attempt to steal money, and then 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 the blood-soaked five items of clothing, believed to be found in the miso tank a little more than a year after the murder case.

When they were found, the redness of the bloodstain was seen. But the defense argues about the color, saying 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.