A former judge who in 1968 sentenced a pro boxer to hang for murdering a family of four submitted a petition Monday to the Supreme Court demanding a retrial because he has always felt the defendant was innocent.
The move came after Norimichi Kumamoto, 69, who was in charge of drafting the Shizuoka District Court verdict, said publicly in March he had thought Iwao Hakamada, now 71, was not guilty during the trial but could not persuade the two other judges.
In the petition, Kumamoto said he thought from the beginning that Hakamada was innocent as he doubted the credibility of Hakamada's confession. The court ended up rejecting a huge portion of the confession as evidence.