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Exonerated prisoner awarded $1.4m after 46 years spent on death row in Japan | Japan

The Japanese man, the world's longest death row inmate, was falsely convicted of murder, was awarded $1.4 million in compensation, officials say.

The payment represents the 12,500 yen ($83) daily spent on detention during the 46 years.

The now 89-year-old former boxer was exonerated in 2024 for four times the murders in 1966 after a tireless campaign by his sister and others.

The Sichuan Cheon District Court said in a decision decided Monday that “the claimant will be awarded to 217,362,500,000 yen,” a court spokesman told AFP.

The same court held in September that the wife was not guilty of a retrial and that police had tampered with the evidence.

Yamada suffered “inhuman interrogation intended to force a statement (confession),” he later retreated, the court said at the time. The final amount is a record of this type of compensation, local media said.

However, Hanada's legal team says the money has not reached the pain he suffered.

His lawyers have said decades of detention — the threat of enforcement is constantly looming — has hit Konta's mental health hard, calling him “living in a fantasy world.”

Yamada was the fifth death row inmate to be granted a retrial of Japan's postwar history. All four previous cases resulted in exoneration.

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