SUPPORTERS PETITION FOR RETRIAL OF BOXER 25 YEARS ON DEATH ROW

supporters of Iwao Hakamada, a former professional boxer who had been on death row for 25 years handed the Japanese Supreme Court a petition with 2,880 signatures demanding a retrial.
Hakamada, 69, had been sentenced to death in 1980 for fatally stabbing his boss and the victim's family and setting their house on fire in 1966. He has been seeking a retrial since 1981, saying he was forced to confess during weeks of pretrial interrogation in which he claimed he was tortured. His retrial application, however, was turned down by the Shizuoka District Court in 1994 and by the Tokyo High Court in 2004. His defense had since appealed to the Supreme Court. Masaki Monma, representative of the Association to Save Innocent Prisoner Former Boxer Iwao Hakamada, told reporters later in the day that the court ignored many items of evidence that cast doubt on Hakamada's guilt. “Hakamada was obviously falsely convicted,'' Monma said.