The Tokyo High Court on Monday overturned the Shizuoka District Court's decision to reopen the 1966 murder case involving former professional boxer Iwao Hakamada, who was convicted of killing four people, despite recent DNA evidence that undermined his prosecution.
The case, often cited as an example of how miscarriages of justice take place in the Japanese judicial system, has seen Hakamada become an emblem of wrongful convictions after spending over four decades behind bars, most of it on death row.
The high court, presided over by Justice Takaaki Oshima, rejected the lower court's ruling that the DNA on bloodstained clothes found near the crime scene, presumably worn by the murderer, did not match Hakamada's DNA. The high court claimed that the results were not credible and fell short of being "indisputable" evidence.
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