Japan executes first man convicted by citizen judges

Source: The Guardian (18 December 2015)

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/dec/18/japan-executes-first-man-convicted-by-citizen-judges

Japan on Friday carried out the first execution of a man who had been convicted by lay judges, as part of a pair of hangings that were condemned by human rights groups.


The two executions bring to 14 the total number of death sentences carried out since Shinzo Abe became prime minister three years ago.

Japanese media quoted a justice ministry official as saying that Sumitoshi Tsuda had been hanged for killing three people in May 2009. Tsuda, 63, was the first inmate to be executed following a conviction by a new system introduced in 2009to give citizen jurors a role in sentencing, along with a panel of judges.

Campaigners described the executions as “a cruel form of punishment”.

Roseann Rife, East Asia research director at Amnesty International, said: “The Japanese authorities’ willingness to put people to death is chilling and must end now before more lives are lost. The death penalty is not justice or an answer to tackling crime, it is a cruel form of punishment that flies in the face of respect for life.

“Japan should immediately introduce an official moratorium on executions as a first step towards abolition of the death penalty.”

Some campaigners hoped lay judges would be more reluctant to convict defendants accused of crimes that carry the death penalty - particularly those who claim they were forced to confess - but the number of accused to have been sentenced to death under the system now stands at 26.

The justice minister, Mitsuhide Iwaki, told reporters that the lay judges had arrived at a “very grave” judgement after lengthy deliberations.

The second hanged man, Kazuyuki Wakabayashi, 39, had been convicted of the murder of a 52-year-old woman and her daughter in 2006. He was sentenced to death by judges.
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Japan has resisted international pressure to abolish the death penalty, notably from the UN and the European Union. Public support for capital punishment has remained strong since Aum Supreme Truth, a doomsday cult, killed 13 people and injured thousands of others in a sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway in 1995.

Japan and the US are the only two advanced industrial nations that retain the death penalty. Last year, only 22 countries carried out executions, and as of November this year, 140 countries had abolished capital punishment in law or in practice, according to Amnesty.

“Japan’s continued use of the death penalty makes it stand out for all the wrong reasons – across the world, and increasingly also in the East Asia region,” Rife said.

Japan’s “secret” executions have been condemned as particularly cruel. Typically, prisoners are kept in solitary confinement for years and given only a few hours’ notice before being led to the gallows. Their families and lawyers are usually notified about the execution only after it has taken place.

Amnesty said that several prisoners with mental and intellectual disabilities are known to have been executed or remain on death row.

Doubts have also been raised over the safety of death penalty convictions in Japan. Iwao Hakamada, who had spent more than 45 years on death row, was freed last year after a court ordered a retrial in his murder case, amid suggestions that police investigators fabricated evidence against him.

Before Friday’s executions Japan had 128 inmates on death row, local media said.

Japan: Lay judges sentence 'minor' to death

Lay judges choose ultimate penalty for minor
From: The Yomiuri Shimbun
27 November 2010

A panel of three professional and six lay judges at the Sendai District Court on Thursday sentenced to death a minor who killed two women and seriously injured a man earlier this year.

"Considering the brutality of his crime and the gravity of the harm he caused, we have no option but to choose the ultimate penalty," presiding Judge Nobuyuki Suzuki said.

This is the first death sentence handed down to a minor under the lay judge system since it began last year. Many consider the ruling to be in keeping with the recent trend to toughen punishments for juvenile offenders.

It will likely affect future rulings in lay judge trials dealing with similar cases.

Because the defendant, a former demolition worker, pleaded guilty to the charges against him, the focal point of his trial became what punishment was appropriate. In other words, the judges had to decide whether to rule that he could be rehabilitated and thereby avoid capital punishment, or to give weight to the brutality of his crime and impose the death penalty

Ultimately, the ruling condemned the defendant for committing his crimes in a "relentless, ruthless and particularly atrocious" manner.

Furthermore, the court decided that the defendant's statements of apology were "superficial" and "shallow." It said he has an "extremely low possibility of rehabilitation," and the court could find no reason not to hand down the death sentence.

The crimes took place in February in Ishinomaki, Miyagi Prefecture. The defendant, who was 18 years and seven months old at the time, broke into his former girlfriend's house and tried to abduct her. When her elder sister and a friend tried to stop him, he killed them with a butcher knife.

The defendant also seriously injured a man who was present. At the time, he was on probation for injuring his own mother.

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Tougher penalties sought
The Juvenile Law, which has as its basic principles the sound growth and protection of juveniles, was revised in 2000. The changed law made charges of deliberate murder by minors aged 16 or older subject to criminal trials, in principle, because the frequent occurrence of heinous crimes committed by minors has heightened public calls to toughen punishments for juvenile offenders.

The change in the sentence given to a minor who killed a young mother and her baby daughter in Hikari, Yamaguchi Prefecture, in 1999 symbolizes the trend toward harsher penalties for juvenile criminals.

The Hiroshima High Court handed down a ruling of life imprisonment to the defendant, who committed the murders at the age of 18, but the Supreme Court rejected this sentence and sent the case back to the high court.

In its second trial on the murders, the high court sentenced the defendant to death.

In the Miyagi case, the ruling said the defendant's age was not a decisive reason to avoid meting out capital punishment. This reflects the Supreme Court's thinking on the ruling in the mother-daughter murder case.

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Lay judge 'almost crushed'
According to a survey compiled by the Supreme Court in 2006, more than 90 percent of professional judges said they would commute a sentence if a defendant was a minor. But half of ordinary citizens polled replied they would neither toughen nor commute a sentence against a juvenile defendant.

Only one-quarter said they would commute a sentence for a juvenile offender.

The results appear to illustrate the public's harsh view on juvenile crimes.

"I was almost crushed under the heavy pressure," said one of the lay judges, who agreed to be questioned at a press conference after the ruling in the Miyagi case. "I want the court to provide mental care for lay judges for as long as necessary."

These are serious problems the court faces every time lay judges have to hand down a heavy sentence.

(From The Yomiuri Shimbun, Nov. 26, 2010)
(Nov. 27, 2010)

Japan: Lay judges give first death sentence

Lay judge duty takes a heavy toll / Concern over psychological cost of participating in death penalty cases
Fumio Tanaka and Eiji Kaji / Yomiuri Shimbun Staff Writers
From Daily Yomiuri Online

The first death sentence under the lay judge system was handed down Tuesday at the Yokohama District Court. It is hard to imagine how much anguish and mental stress the panel of citizen judges experienced in deciding a man who killed two others deserved capital punishment.

Hiroyuki Ikeda, 32, was sentenced to death after being convicted of robbery, murder and abandoning the bodies of the victims.

At a press conference held after the court handed down the sentence, a man in his 50s who served as a lay judge in the trial was asked whether the three-day period of deliberations had been sufficient.

"It's hard to say," he said, declining to give a definite answer.

Court deliberations on cases in which prosecutors demand capital punishment generally continue for more than one year before a sentence is handed down.

"I kept looking at the accused, thinking over and over whether a death sentence really was appropriate," said Fumio Yasuhiro, 66, a former senior judge at the Tokyo High Court. "The lay judges had to make a grave decision in a short period of time. They had a hard task."

Just before concluding the proceedings, presiding Judge Yoshifumi Asayama made an unusual remark to the condemned man, saying, "The court recommends you appeal the ruling.

"During the trial, Ikeda said he would accept any punishment, so the judge's final remark was read by some observers as an expression of the lay judges' desire that the death sentence not be finalized based on their judgement alone.

A senior prosecution official was critical of the judge's remark, saying, "[The nine judges] should take responsibility for the conclusion they came to after extended discussion.

"Yasuhiro, though, thought the judge's action was understandable.

"The fact that there are opportunities for appeal probably does lessen the burden on the lay judges. There will probably be similar remarks made by judges in the future," Yasuhiro said.

Under the jury trial system in the United States, a 12-member panel is in principle tasked merely with deciding whether the accused is guilty. In many states, however, juries also assess criminal culpability in cases where the prosecution requests the death penalty.

Surveys taken in the 1990s of people who had served on U.S. juries that decided in favor of the death penalty found many had suffered from posttraumatic stress disorder, insomnia and headaches.

In death penalty cases heard by juries in the United States, the criteria and procedures for assessing culpability are stipulated in detail. In Texas the process is particularly clear-cut, with jurors instructed to base their decision on just three criteria, one of which is "whether the accused would be a continuing threat to society."

Futoshi Iwata, professor of law at Sophia University, said that while such a simplified system "is designed to leave little room for anguish" for jurors, it also has demerits.

"Giving the death penalty can only be justified if a jury has reached that conclusion after truly grappling with the case. The issues involved are not so simple that they can be addressed with standardized procedures," Iwata said.

===Requirements for a decision

In a statement issued after Tuesday's ruling, the Japan Federation of Bar Associations said, "It is time to discuss how verdicts should be reached in cases where prosecutors demand the death penalty.

"In Japan, a majority of the nine-member panel--three professional and six lay judges--is required for the death penalty to apply.

In the United States, the death penalty cannot be applied without the unanimous support of the 12-member jury, a system some experts believe places a lesser psychological burden on jurors.

A veteran Japanese judge said the emotional and psychological impact on lay judges involved in handing down a death sentence would be less if the decision was made unanimously.

"Cases need to be discussed thoroughly, until all [nine] judges agree. If I were involved as a [professional] judge, I'd try as much as possible to avoid handing down a death penalty when opinion was split," the veteran judge said.

Keiko Kiyohara, mayor of Mitaka, western Tokyo, was a member of the governmental study panel that devised the lay judge system.

"Initially I asserted that, considering the possibility of mental stress, lay judges should handle a relatively lighter case before being involved in a death penalty trial," she has said.

As the panel's discussions progressed, however, she changed her mind.

"It is particularly important that the sensibilities of members of the public should be reflected in trials that decide whether a person lives or dies," Kiyohara said.

At Tuesday's press conference, the same man who served as a citizen judge in the Ikeda trial expressed his support for lay judges' participation in death penalty trials.

"I've learned a great deal by serving as a lay judge. For the purpose of fairly assessing culpability, it's a good thing."

(Nov. 18, 2010)