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| Execution chamber at the Tokyo Detention Center |
The Japan Federation of Bar Associations has come out in opposition to the death penalty, urging the government Friday to immediately start public debate on its abolition and suspend executions while the discussions are ongoing.
"The death penalty is an inhumane punishment as it claims precious life, and it robs those convicted of the potential to rehabilitate," the federation said in its declaration adopted at its annual 2-day human rights meeting in Takamatsu, Kagawa Prefecture.
Citing 4 postwar capital cases, in which death row inmates were acquitted in retrials, the JFBA also said the death penalty system "always possesses a risk of miscarriage of justice, and there will be no mending if a wrongfully convicted person is executed."
"The abolition of the death penalty has become an unshakable international trend, and now is the time to launch a social debate about its termination," the declaration noted.
While the JFBA has so far proposed that the government suspend executions until problems, including miscarriages of justice and the secrecy surrounding executions, are cleared up, the latest declaration "is a step toward its abolition," Hideki Wakabayashi of Amnesty International Japan said.
"It is notable the declaration refers to the backgrounds of crimes, such as poverty, and stresses the need to promote social reintegration of those who have committed crimes," the executive director of the human rights group said. "It will hold major significance for the anti-death penalty campaign."
Until now, the federation had declined to show a clear stance on whether to terminate the death penalty partly out of consideration for its members who support it, but a lawyer involved in drafting the declaration said, "We compiled it based on a stance that it is 'desirable' to abolish capital punishment."
The declaration followed a symposium on Thursday, the first day of the meeting, to discuss how to handle crimes at a time when ordinary citizens are involved in several cases in delivering death sentence under the lay judge system introduced in 2009 to try serious cases.
At the symposium, Yumiko Yamaguchi, who sustained serious injuries during a fatal 2000 bus hijacking by a 17-year-old boy, said she thought when she was slashed by him that "he must be hurt so seriously that he is forced to do such a thing."
She learned later the boy had refused to attend school after being bullied, much like her own daughter. "The thing is that he is also a human being like us who is carrying various concerns."
Another panelist, Masayoshi Taguchi, served as a citizen judge last year in a case in which a person was charged with negligence as a guardian resulting in death.
Sitting on the bench, Taguchi thought the defendant was "just an ordinary person who laughs and cries." He said he had learned that the image of an accused person is sometimes distorted "through the filter of media reports."
Taguchi, a member of a group of those who have served as lay judges, also said, "A group member involved in delivering a death sentence once told me that citizen judges become perpetrators against the defendant as they lead the defendant to die. (The system) is irrational."
It was also reported that detention periods of those who received life sentences are getting longer, forcing many prisoners to die in prison without returning to society.
According to the data submitted to the symposium, among 14 people who served life terms and were released on parole in 1990, 8 were detained for 20 years or less. But 20 years later, the total number of those released was halved to 7 and all of the releases came after more than 20 years' detention.
The declaration has been issued at a time when 139 countries, or 2/3 of the world's nations, have abolished the death penalty by law or in practice as of 2010. 58 countries still maintain it, of which only 19 nations actually killed inmates in 2009 and 23 countries in 2010, according to the federation.
Under such circumstances, Japan was urged by the Geneva-based Human Rights Committee to "favorably consider abolishing the death penalty and inform the public, as necessary, about the desirability of abolition" regardless of opinion polls.
Secrecy surrounding Japan's capital punishment system has also been strongly criticized, with the public unaware of procedures following the issuing of a death sentence.
The last execution in Japan came in July last year when then Justice Minister Keiko Chiba, a qualified lawyer and former member of the anti-death penalty parliamentarian group, approved the hanging of 2 inmates.
In an unusual move, she attended the executions and later allowed media to visit the execution chamber at the Tokyo Detention House in a bid to stir public debate over the death penalty.
Source: Mainichi Daily News, October 7, 2011
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