About four decades ago, when Norimichi Kumamoto was a Shizuoka District Court judge, he thought that Iwao Hakamada, under indictment for killing a family of four in Shizuoka Prefecture in 1966, was innocent.

Kumamoto did not find the case presented by prosecutors very convincing, but he eventually agreed to go along with the two other judges in 1968 and sentence Hakamada, a former professional boxer, to death.

This year, Kumamoto began speaking out on the case publicly in the hope of freeing Hakamada, who has been on death row for the last 40 years.