Lawyers for a man sentenced to death in a multiple-murder case from 1966 called for a retrial Monday, saying new evidence proves their client was wrongfully convicted.
Defense lawyers for Iwao Hakamada, 77, submitted a statement to the Shizuoka District Court saying DNA test results exonerate Hakamada, while prosecutors submitted a counterstatement the same day.
The former professional boxer was sentenced to hang by the district court in 1968 for murdering his employer, an executive of a miso paste maker, the executive's wife and their two children, in a trial that became known as the "Hakamada case." The ruling was upheld by the Tokyo High Court in 1976 and finalized by the Supreme Court in 1980.