After nearly 60 years, former professional boxer Iwao Hakamata has been exonerated.

Ahead of a Thursday deadline to file an appeal against last month’s not-guilty verdict of the Shizuoka District Court, which heard a rare retrial of the 1966 murder case against the ex-boxer, prosecutors have decided not to do so, his lawyers' office told The Japan Times on Tuesday.

“We are happy that it is finally over,” said Hideko Hakamata, who has been fighting the legal battle on behalf of her younger brother, recalling the moment she got the news from defense lawyer Hideyo Ogawa in a call on Tuesday afternoon.

Hideko Hakamata, 91, said that she will share the news with her brother when he is feeling better.

“I’ve already told him that he’s innocent and that we’ve won, so I don’t think there’s much need to say it again,” she said.

On Sept. 26, the court ruled that Iwao Hakamata, 88, is not guilty of the 1966 quadruple murder. The presiding judge apologized to Hideko Hakamata, who attended the trial on behalf of her brother, for taking so long to hand down an acquittal.

Prosecutors were reportedly divided over whether to appeal the case.

Appealing the case would have likely triggered criticism from the public for prolonging the case when a not-guilty verdict has already been handed down in a retrial.

But forgoing an appeal means a ruling that stated that investigators planted key evidence in a crime scene would be finalized — something hard for prosecutors to accept.

Later in the day, prosecutors formally announced that they have decided not to appeal the case.

“Mr. Hakamata has been in a legally unstable status for a significant amount of time and we as prosecutors are sorry for that,” Prosecutor-General Naomi Unemoto said in a statement reported by Jiji Press.

Unemoto said the Supreme Public Prosecutor’s Office will review Hakamata’s retrial to determine why it took so long.

The Shizuoka court ruled that prosecutors did not have enough evidence to prove that Hakamata was the perpetrator of the crime. It ruled that five pieces of clothing found in a miso barrel more than a year after the murders — the main evidence for convicting the defendant — were in fact not worn by the perpetrator.

The court ruling also stated that Hakamata had been coerced into giving a false confession and that investigators planted the five pieces of clothing to cement their case against him.

Hakamata has maintained his innocence since his first trial hearing in November 1966.

After his death penalty was finalized in 1980, his defense team spent the next 42 years seeking a retrial — the only way in the justice system that a convicted individual can be exonerated.

In a dramatic turn, the Shizuoka District Court in 2014 ordered a retrial and instructed that Hakamata be freed from prison. But prosecutors appealed against the retrial order to a higher court.

After another nine years and several appeals, a retrial finally materialized – the Shizuoka District Court heard the case from October 2023 through May this year, and delivered its verdict last month.

The nearly 48 years that Hakamata spent under detention caused him to develop Ganser Syndrome, a rare dissociative disorder that involves odd behavior and hallucinations commonly seen in prisoners.

The Japan Federation of Bar Associations has cited the decades it took Hakamata to secure a retrial as evidence of the nation’s faulty system to exonerate wrongfully convicted individuals and urges the government to revise relevant laws to remedy the situation.