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.

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.

A pair of blood-spattered trousers in a miso tank and an allegedly forced confession helped send Iwao Hakamata to death row in the 1960s.