In his last words, he told his mother and daughter that he loved them but expressed no remorse and did not repeat his claim of innocence. "I'm OK," he said in tears, strapped to the gurney.

The judge said the court acknowledged multiple fabrications of evidence and that Iwao Hakamada was not the culprit, his lawyer said.

In a retrial that began after he spent 45 years on death row, 88-year-old Iwao Hakamada was found not guilty of a 1966 quadruple homicide.