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Thread: Japan Capital Punishment News

  1. #11
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    Osaka court deliberates constitutionality of hanging

    The Osaka District Court began two days of deliberations Tuesday on the constitutionality of hanging condemned criminals as part of a trial for a man accused of arson and the murder of five people.

    All six lay judges involved in the trial, as well as two substitutes, attended Tuesday's session even though it wasn't required.

    Citizen judges do not have a say on constitutional issues, which are decided only by professional judges under the 2004 law on the lay judge system.

    Lawyers for 43-year-old Sunao Takami have argued that execution by hanging, which Japan has been carrying out for about 140 years, is cruel and runs counter to the Constitution's ban on "torture and cruel punishments by any public officer."

    The defense team told the court Tuesday it is "human wisdom" that cruel punishment should not be used to penalize criminals in tragic incidents.

    An Austrian forensic specialist who has studied cases of death by hanging testified that the possibility of the prisoner being decapitated or not dying immediately can't be ruled out.

    The prosecutors in the case have said they don't plan to argue the matter because past Supreme Court rulings have already made clear that capital punishment is constitutional.

    Takeshi Tsuchimoto, a former prosecutor who attended hangings during his career, is scheduled to testify Wednesday.

    In a ruling on the death penalty in 1948 and one on execution by hanging in 1955, the Supreme Court declared both constitutional and said they were not considered cruel punishment.

    The 1948 ruling, however, did state that the death penalty should be considered unconstitutional if the execution method if an evolving society deems it cruel.

    Takami, charged with arson, murder and attempted murder, entered a guilty plea when the trial opened in early September before a panel of three professional and six lay judges.

    He is accused of pouring a bucket of gasoline on the floor of an Osaka pachinko parlor in July 2009 and setting fire to it, killing five people and injuring 10 others.

    The prosecution argues that Takami often exhibited impulsive behavior when he was under stress and that he decided to kill ordinary people to work off his accumulated frustrations.

    The focal points in the trial will include whether Takami is mentally competent to be held criminally responsible for his acts and whether the death penalty is constitutional.

    The court is expected to hand down its ruling in late October.

    http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-b...0111012a8.html

  2. #12
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    Justice Minister Hiraoka hints he may order execution

    TOKYO (Kyodo) -- Justice Minister Hideo Hiraoka indicated Friday he might approve an execution while in office.

    Hiraoka said at a press conference he does not intend to terminate capital punishment and that he will make his "own decision by looking at each case," even while the Justice Ministry's study panel is debating the issue.

    Shortly after assuming the post in September, Hiraoka expressed reluctance to approve any execution, saying he would not be able to give his consent amid domestic opposition to capital punishment and an international push to abolish it.

    His comments came after Chief Cabinet Secretary Osamu Fujimura told the House of Representatives Cabinet committee Friday that the Cabinet of Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda "has no intention of repealing the death penalty."

    Former justice minister Keiko Chiba became the first justice minister from the Democratic Party of Japan to approve executions -- the hanging of two inmates on July 28 last year. But her successors -- Minoru Yanagida, Yoshito Sengoku and Satsuki Eda -- all refrained from granting approval.

    The Japan Federation of Bar Associations urged the government to immediately start public debate on the abolition of capital punishment, saying in a declaration adopted at its meeting earlier this month that the death penalty is "an inhumane punishment as it claims precious life, and it robs those convicted of the potential to rehabilitate."

    http://mdn.mainichi.jp/mdnnews/news/...dm135000c.html

  3. #13
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    Is Aum's guru finally headed for the gallows?

    Tomorrow, Nov. 21, the Supreme Court is expected to hand down its ruling on the appeal filed by Seiichi Endo, a former member of the Aum Shinrikyo (Supreme Truth) cult. Endo, now 51, was sentenced to death in 2002 (upheld in 2007) for his role in the nerve gas attacks in Matsumoto City in June 1994 and the Tokyo subway system in March 1995 — in which 20 people died and thousands more suffered varying degrees of after-effects.

    Before joining the cult, the Hokkaido native had been working on a doctorate in virology at one of Japan's top universities.

    As no other appeals are pending, Endo's case is likely to mark the end of the 189 criminal trials involving cult members.

    Including Endo, 11 out of some 120 convicts currently awaiting execution in Japan are former members of Aum. The best known is its 56-year-old founder, Shoko Asahara (real name: Chizuo Matsumoto).

    Nikkan Gendai (Nov. 7) speculates that the Democratic Party of Japan-led government may now proceed with death sentences against Asahara and possibly some of the other cultists.

    Minister of Justice Hideo Hiraoka has shown indications he favors signing orders to proceed. During a press conference shortly after taking office in early September, he was quoted as saying, "I'd like to get my thoughts in order. Until then I can't make any decision [regarding executions]." But subsequent remarks made at the end of October suggested Hiraoka was moving in favor of proceeding.

    An unnamed political source told Nikkan Gendai, "If the decision is made to execute Asahara, it will boost support for the Noda cabinet."

    But while justice is supposed to be blind, signing off on Asahara's execution appears to be easier said than done. One legal stumbling block is that Asahara was convicted largely on circumstantial evidence. It is acknowledged that he did not murder anyone by his own hand (he's legally blind), although several cult members testified they acted on his orders.

    After Asahara underwent examinations by several psychiatrists, the court ruled him sane and accountable for his crimes. But he would not confer with his defense attorneys, and babbled incoherently while in the courtroom. He has neither acknowledged nor denied his involvement in any of the crimes.

    The inability to mount an insanity defense notwithstanding, a sticking point that remains is the stipulation in the legal code that a condemned person must understand why he is being put to death — certainly debatable in Asahara's case.

    Another sticking point, from the legal perspective, is that it's uncertain exactly how many murders the cult committed. Cult scientists allegedly developed a super oven for cremating the remains of their victims, which were then pulverized and scattered. While the cult, now called Aleph, still exists, many former members have gone missing, and it's uncertain if they're alive or if they chose to disappear, either out of remorse or in fear of their lives.

    While opinion surveys tend to show a large majority of the public still favors capital punishment, the number of executions carried out has been declining for decades, and with the exception of a spike during the last LDP-headed government in 2008, during which 15 men (no women have been executed in Japan since 1965) were hanged, the number of convicts on death row has risen to an all-time high.

    In recent years, the death penalty has been selectively applied largely to those who killed during the commission of another crime, such as armed robbery, or for slaying vulnerable people such as the elderly, females or children.

    After more than two decades of writing about crime, I have also observed that Japan's judiciary tends to vacillate over capital cases involving collective guilt — for example when homicides are committed by members of underworld syndicates (prison sentences for the killing of one yakuza by another tend to be remarkably short); political extremists such as the Japanese Red Army radicals of the 1970s; or by Aum, whose members supposedly committed the lethal gassings and other murders out of altruistic motives.

    It's ironic that one of Aum's most vociferous defenders is also its most famous victim. Yoshiyuki Kono was the first responder to the 1994 sarin nerve gas attack in Matsumoto, which immediately brought him under police suspicion as having synthesized sarin by mixing pesticides he stored in a shed in his garden. Despite vociferous proclamations by chemists that such a feat was impossible, the police grilled Kono intensively and leaked innuendos about him to the media, upon which he was targeted by hate mails and threatening calls.

    The gas also left Kono's wife, Sumiko, totally disabled. She lingered in a semi-vegetative state for 14 years, until dying, at age 60, in August 2008.

    "More than hating them (Aum), I'm grateful for this having brought me closer to my wife," Kono, who now resides in Kagoshima City, tells the Sankei Shimbun (Nov. 15).

    Kono has visited Tokyo's Kosuge Prison for meetings with four of the Matsumoto perpetrators and received their apologies.

    "It was sort of unreal, like meeting the actors who played heavies in a drama," he recalls.

    While many find Kono's sympathy for the condemned cultists incomprehensible, he reminds them he knows how it feels to have been a crime suspect and the target of attacks by the mass media.

    "Executing them absolutely won't bring me any sense of relief," he declares. "To go through life holding a grudge is a formula for misery."

    http://www.japantimes.co.jp/text/fd20111120bj.html

  4. #14
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    AUM trials end as top court lets stand death penalty for senior member

    TOKYO (Kyodo) -- The Supreme Court let stand the death sentence for a senior AUM Shinrikyo cult member by rejecting an appeal over his involvement in the group's sarin gas attacks in Japan in the 1990s, effectively ending more than 16 years of investigations and trials involving the group.

    Seiichi Endo, a 51-year-old veterinarian and virologist, was given the death penalty by lower courts for playing a central role in the 1994-1995 nerve gas attacks in Nagano Prefecture and on the Tokyo subway system by producing the agent as a key architect of the group's chemical weapons development program.

    Endo is set to become the 13th member of the cult to have a death sentence finalized. AUM founder Shoko Asahara, 56, whose real name is Chizuo Matsumoto, is found to have masterminded a series of heinous crimes and convicted of murdering a total of 27 people in 13 criminal cases.

    The defense for Endo plans to file for a correction of the ruling, a procedure that can be undertaken within a 10-day window beginning the day after the ruling under the criminal procedure law. If the filing is dismissed, Endo's death sentence will officially be finalized. No rulings have been overturned through such a procedure.

    Cult leader Asahara was sentenced to death by the Tokyo District Court in February 2004, and the ruling has already been finalized. Asahara gave few clear testimonies in the courtroom about what motivated him to lead the heinous crimes.

    Defense lawyers for Endo have argued that he did not execute the attacks or lead them and that he was brainwashed by Asahara and not allowed to harbor doubts about the cult founder's orders.

    Endo was given the death penalty by the Tokyo District Court in October 2002, and the Tokyo High Court upheld the lower court ruling in May 2007.

    The sarin gas attacks on the Tokyo subway system on March 20, 1995, killed 13 people and left thousands of others ill, while an earlier sarin attack on June 27, 1994, in a parking lot near housing for judges in Matsumoto, Nagano Prefecture, killed eight people.

    AUM members were also involved in the killing in November 1989 of 33-year-old Tsutsumi Sakamoto, an anti-AUM lawyer, his wife and son.

    In addition to Asahara, a total of 188 members of his group were charged with involvement in a series of AUM crimes, over which all of the defendants were found guilty. Three AUM members are still on the run and remain on the wanted list.

    AUM Shinrikyo, known as AUM Supreme Truth in English, renamed itself Aleph in 2000. It remains under the surveillance of the Justice Ministry's Public Security Intelligence Agency.

    In 2007, a senior member and some followers left Aleph to launch a splinter group called Hikari no Wa (Circle of Rainbow Light).

    http://mdn.mainichi.jp/mdnnews/news/...dm021000c.html

  5. #15
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    Last death sentence upheld in 1995 Tokyo subway gas attack

    Japan's Supreme Court upheld a death sentence handed down on a member of the doomsday cult that staged gas attacks on the Tokyo subway in 1995, a court spokesman said on Tuesday, ending the trials of cult followers charged in a series of assaults.

    Seiichi Endo, 51, was the 13th member of the Aum Shinri Kyo cult to have his death sentence confirmed in a ruling issued on Monday. First sentenced in 2002, Endo had joined the cult in 1987, when he was studying virology at the University of Kyoto.

    Local media said none of those found guilty had been executed. Justice Minister Hideo Hiraoka last month said he would make no comment on the cases but would "cautiously decide" on whether to apply the death penalty.

    The cult's founder, Shoko Asahara, whose real name is Chizuo Matsumoto, had his death sentence confirmed in 2006. Three cult members are still on the run.

    Simultaneous attacks with sarin nerve gas on five Tokyo subway trains during the rush hour on March 20, 1995, killed 12 people and made thousands ill.

    The attacks, with images of bodies lying across platforms and soldiers in gas masks sealing off subway stations, shattered the country's self-image as a haven of public safety.

    Asahara was found guilty of the 1989 murder of a lawyer who opposed the cult as well as his wife and child. He was also convicted of conspiracy in a 1994 sarin attack in central Japan.

    Aum Shinri Kyo claimed responsibility for the Tokyo attack and later changed its name to Aleph, which still has 1,000 members, according to the Public Security Intelligence Agency.

    http://www.baltimoresun.com/features...,3274486.story

  6. #16
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    Japan has year without executions

    JAPAN has not executed anyone so far in 2011, the government says, setting it up to be the first year in nearly two decades the country has not carried out a single death sentence.

    However, the number of inmates on death row stands at a post-war high of 129 as a debate on the rights and wrongs of capital punishment continues.

    In a legal quirk, executions - always carried out by hanging in Japan - are banned over the New Year period, with a moratorium between December 29 and January 3 as well as on weekends and public holidays.

    A justice ministry spokesman confirmed late this afternoon that there had been no execution in the year 2011 until December 27.

    "We have not been informed of any execution so far during this day (December 28)."

    Justice Minister Hideo Hiraoka has not signalled his intention to order the execution of any inmate in the year's remaining days, the major daily Asahi Shimbun reported.

    "I don't think it has a great significance in itself," Hiraoka told a news conference when asked about the possibility of a year without executions.

    The ministry spokesman said the number of death-row inmates rose from 111 at the end of 2010 to 129 as of December 27.

    The last execution in Japan was in July 2010 when then justice minister Keiko Chiba, a former socialist and lawyer, approved the hanging of two inmates, despite her long-time opposition to the death penalty.

    In an unusual move, Chiba attended the executions and later allowed the media to visit the execution chamber at the Tokyo Detention House in a bid to increase public debate over the death penalty.

    Apart from the United States, Japan is the only major industrialised democracy to carry out capital punishment, a practice that has earned Tokyo repeat protests from European governments and human rights groups.

    Since the end of World War II, only five years have been free of executions: 1964, 1968 and three consecutive years from 1990.

    Eighty-four inmates have been hanged in Japan since 1993, Kyodo news agency reported, quoting human rights groups.

    Justice minister Hiraoka has shown reluctance to approve any executions, saying national debate is needed on whether Japan should maintain or abolish the death penalty, which is generally reserved for those convicted of multiple murders.

    Hiraoka invited experts from Britain and France last week to explain how the two countries abolished capital punishment, the conservative daily Sankei Shimbun said.

    But there is growing frustration among families of murder victims.

    "The case is not over until the death penalty is carried out," said Masaya Miyazono, whose daughter was stabbed to death in 1999 by a man who was eventually condemned to death.

    "I cannot die before the criminal does," the 77-year-old told Sankei.

    http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/bre...-1226232143226

  7. #17
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    Many Japanese death row inmates on meds

    TOKYO (UPI) -- Nearly half of death row inmates in Japan are on full-time medication for mental stress, the Justice Ministry said.

    A ministry official said 56 of 124 inmates on death row have complained of psychological symptoms such as insomnia and hallucinations and have been continuously treated with drugs, The Yomiuri Shimbun reported Friday.

    Such symptoms can occur because of confinement in closed spaces for a long period of time, and since some inmates have been detained for more than 30 years it is suspected the symptoms are the result of their lengthy detention, experts said.

    Under Japanese law, if a death row inmate is diagnosed as insane, the justice minister will order the suspension of the execution.

    However, a high-ranking ministry official has said no inmates currently on death row have been so diagnosed.

    "As far as we could tell, there are no death row inmates who are insane," the official said.

    http://www.upi.com/Top_News/World-Ne...#ixzz1i2iGzCY7

  8. #18
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    Sarin gas victim pleads for cult leaders' lives

    In a remarkable display of forgiveness, one of the victims of the Aum Shinrikyo doomsday cult's sarin gas attacks has called on the Japanese government to abandon the looming execution of the group's leaders.

    Yoshiyuki Kono, who lost his wife in the group's first gas attack and was treated by Japanese authorities as a suspect for almost a year afterwards, said he had forgiven the cult and its members and had visited several of them on death row.

    Kono-san, who spoke to The Australian in Tokyo soon after Japan's Supreme Court dismissed the final appeal lodged from among the cult's jailed leaders, has suffered as much as anyone involved in the attacks.

    He was at home with his wife, Sumiko, and three children on a summer night in 1994 when the family's two dogs began frothing at the mouth and going into muscular spasms.

    In what is thought to have been a trial run for the infamous attack on the Tokyo subway the following year, the Aum Shinrikyo cult had released the deadly odourless nerve gas into the street alongside the Kono family's home in the mountain town of Matsumoto.

    "While I went out to look at the dogs, my wife must have inhaled the gas and by the time the emergency services arrived she was already in cardio-pulmonary arrest," he said.

    With Sumiko near death in hospital, the chief of the investigation developed a bizarre suspicion that Kono-san was involved and it took him almost a year to clear his name.

    "After that I lived my life for my wife," he said. "Even though she did not regain consciousness, I was able to lead my life with her for another 14 years."

    Somehow, in the aftermath of the incident, Kono-san made a sudden and concrete decision that he would hold no enmity towards the perpetrators and offered them complete forgiveness.

    Several leaders of the cult - most of whom were jailed after the 1995 subway attack, in which 13 people died - contacted him to apologise and he has visited four of them in prison.

    "In my mind the incident was already in the past," he said. "I thought if allowing them to say sorry would lighten their mental burden, then I thought I would meet them. I didn't get the sense that any of them were evil men."

    The cult, which drew inspiration from a hotch-potch of extreme religious and political dogmas, attracted many educated Japanese into its ranks to help carry out its murderous attacks.

    One of the three fugitive cult members still wanted by police, Makoto Hirata, turned himself in on New Year's Eve, reviving public interest into the fate of the 13 awaiting execution in custody.

    Kono-san said he did not agree with the death penalty, not even in this case.

    The softly spoken 61-year-old, who relates his experiences without any obvious pain, gave a simple explanation for the depths of his forgiveness.

    "We lead our lives without ever knowing if they will be long or short. We don't even know if we might die tomorrow," he said.

    "Under these circumstances, it is such a waste of time and energy to hold a grudge and enmity."

    http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news...-1226235104572

  9. #19
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    New minister won't shirk from hangings

    New Justice Minister Toshio Ogawa indicated he may issue execution orders as the number of death-row inmates has grown to a postwar high of around 130, but suggested that condemned Aum Shinrikyo members may not face the gallows anytime soon.

    "It's a very hard duty, but I have to take responsibility (for authorizing executions)," Ogawa said Friday at his first news conference since assuming the post. "It isn't in line with the spirit of the law for the number of death-row inmates to continue increasing without executions."

    No hangings were carried out in 2011, the first full year since 1992 in which no inmates were executed.

    Ogawa suggested that with the Jan. 1 arrest of Aum kidnap-slaying fugitive Makoto Hirata after almost 17 years on the run, cult figures on death row may have to testify in his trial and thus none would probably face the gallows in the near future.

    "It's likely that testimony will be heard from the death-row inmates. We need to take this point into consideration," Ogawa said. Hirata, 46, faces trial in connection with the 1995 abduction-murder of Tokyo notary Kiyoshi Kariya.

    A total of 13 Aum members, including cult founder Shoko Asahara, are on death row for a series of crimes, including the 1995 sarin strike on the Tokyo subway system.

    Regardless of party lines, giving the final go-ahead to executions has always been a critical test for justice ministers.

    While Ogawa has shown a positive stance toward signing off on executions, former Justice Minister Seiken Sugiura, a retired Liberal Democratic Party politician, has joined a panel formed recently by the Japan Federation of Bar Associations to pursue the abolition of capital punishment.

    Sugiura, 77, was a rarity among LDP lawmakers for not signing any death warrants when he served as justice minister for nearly a year until September 2006, citing his religious beliefs.

    Sugiura, who joined the panel as an adviser, recently said, "I'll work as a liaison between the panel and politicians and bureaucrats, as I have had connections with both as justice minister and as a parliamentarian."
    Approval rate flatlines

    Friday's Cabinet reshuffle barely registered in the public support rate for Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda, which inched up just 0.1 percent to 35.8 percent, and nearly half of respondents disapproved of his leadership, a poll showed Saturday.

    However, 59.4 percent of respondents have high expectations for new Deputy Prime Minister Katsuya Okada, who will head the push for tax, social security and administrative reforms, the poll showed. Only 37.7 percent viewed his appointment unfavorably. The nationwide telephone survey was conducted Friday and Saturday.

    http://www.japantimes.co.jp/text/nn20120115a1.html

  10. #20
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    Group asks new justice minister not to issue execution orders

    A human rights group has asked new Justice Minister Toshio Ogawa to continue suspending executions, after he indicated Friday shortly after being named to his new post that he may resume issuing orders for hangings.

    While Ogawa told a news conference that "it's very hard duty, but I want to take the responsibility," the Center for Prisoners' Rights said in its letter to him, "you would be abdicating your duty to say you will order executions without examining court documents for each death-row inmate."

    The Tokyo-based group submitted the letter Monday.

    "It is an urgent issue (for Japan) to review the system over the death penalty and to suspend executions while the debate over it is going on," the letter says.

    "It would be impossible to have calm discussion when executions continue."

    No inmates were put to death in 2011, the first 12-month period in 19 years that no one was executed in Japan.

    http://www.japantimes.co.jp/text/nn20120119f5.html

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