The world's longest-serving death row prisoner, Iwao Hakamada, won compensation from Japan this week after almost five decades in jail -- and he owes his freedom to a judge with steely determination.

The former boxer, now 89, was exonerated last year of a 1966 quadruple murder after a tireless campaign by his sister and others.

But he might still be behind bars if not for Hiroaki Murayama, the judge who in 2014 dared do something extremely rare in Japan's often intractable legal system: he ordered a retrial.

But mostly it's because the system is haphazard, outdated and out of step with international standards, the 68-year-old now retired judge said.

"Retrial is supposed to be the last possible measure to save the wrongfully incarcerated, but the system is not functioning as it should," Murayama told AFP in an interview last month.

Lawyers first called for a retrial in 1981: it would take 42 years for that process to actually start.

This week the court that acquitted Hakamada in the retrial -- where it said police had tampered with evidence and carried out "inhumane interrogations" meant to force a confession -- awarded........

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