The Japan Federation of Bar
Associations’ recent call to abolish capital punishment should serve as a
catalyst for informed and broad public discussions. Both the Justice Ministry
and the lawyer group have an important role to play in making necessary
information available to ensure those discussions are meaningful. The
ministry’s responsibility is especially heavy — the secrecy surrounding this
nation’s death penalty system is often blamed for the lack of public discourse
on the issue.
The bar federation adopted a
resolution calling for ending capital punishment at its Oct. 6 meeting in Fukui
for promoting protection of human rights, with 546 of the 786 participants
supporting it. Some lawyers who support capital punishment criticize that it is
unreasonable for the organization not to accept letters of attorney from
members who could not attend the meeting.
Still, the declaration by the
organization comprising some 37,600 Japanese lawyers and hundreds of registered
foreign legal professionals is significant. The federation in the past always
stopped short of calling for an outright end to death penalty, although at a
similar meeting five years ago it called for starting broad discussions on
abolishing capital punishment and requested that the justice minister suspend
executions.
A key factor behind the move
is an international trend. According to Amnesty International, 102 countries
had abolished the death penalty as of the end of 2015, a sharp increase from 60
in 1996, and another 38 countries have not carried out executions for 10 years
or longer. Of the 35 OECD member countries, only Japan, the United States and
South Korea retain capital punishment as an institution, although South Korea’s
last execution was in 1997. In 2014, the United Nations Human Rights Committee
urged Japan to “give due consideration in the abolition of the death penalty.”
Since the current Abe
administration came to power in December 2012, a total of 16 inmates have been
executed. The bar federation calls for abolishing capital punishment by 2020,
when the U.N. Congress on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice is to be held
in Japan.
More fundamental factors
behind the resolution are inherent problems in the death penalty system,
including its vengeful nature as criminal punishment and its cruelty. While
noting that even the worst offenders stand a chance of reintegrating with
society, the federation charges that if an innocent person or an offender not
truly deserving death is executed, the human rights violation is irrecoverable.
The risk of false charges and convictions have been highlighted by the fact
that four inmates on death row were exonerated in retrials in the 1980s and by
the freeing in 2014 of Iwao Hakamada after spending 48 years behind bars. He
had been sentenced to death for the 1966 murders of four people on the strength
of evidence apparently fabricated by the police.
Supporters of the death
penalty refer to the sentiments of crime victims and their family members — who
are inclined to think that killers deserve execution — as well as public
opinion that favors capital punishment. In the 2014 version of a survey
conducted every five years by the Cabinet Office, 80.3 percent of respondents
said the death penalty is unavoidable, while only 9.7 percent called for
abolishing the system.
At the same time, 40.5 percent
of those who endorsed the death penalty system said it can be abolished in the
future “if the situation changes.” Of all the respondents, 37.7 percent said
the death penalty should be scrapped if life imprisonment without parole is
introduced. Currently, a person serving a life sentence has a chance of being
paroled after serving at least 10 years in prison. The JFBA’s declaration
proposed introduction of either life imprisonment without parole or granting
parole only after the inmate has spent 20 to 25 years behind bars — in place of
hanging.
But discussions about capital
punishment should not just focus on substituting stricter varieties of life in
prison. The Justice Ministry should not only provide sufficient information about
Japan’s system but study and disclose criminal punishment policies and public
opinions on the death penalty in other countries. This kind of information is
indispensable for informative discussions.
The government should gather
and provide information as to whether capital punishment is an effective
deterrent to crime, including through comparison of examples of countries that
maintain the death penalty and those that have abolished it. Relying just on
public opinion endorsing capital punishment to justify its existence does not
stand up to reason.
Another point to consider is
whether the treatment of death row inmates is humane enough. Such prisoners in
Japan are kept in solitary confinement and their communication with people
outside is tightly restricted. Currently, the ministry doesn’t give advance
notice of executions to the inmates nor to their lawyers and relatives, and it
is not clear what criteria is used in deciding when a prisoner is to be
executed.
Since the introduction of the
lay judge system in 2009, it is now possible for ordinary citizens to take part
in handing down a death penalty. That alone calls for more public discussions
on capital punishment. Relevant authorities and parties should not dismiss the
JFBA’s call but use it as material for the public to think about the issue,
irrespective of which position they take on the matter.
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