Latest news with #IwaoHakamata
Asahi Shimbun
08-05-2025
- Politics
- Asahi Shimbun
Executions around the world up 32% in 2024, says Amnesty
At least 1,518 executions were carried out worldwide in 2024, up 32 percent from the year before, according to Amnesty International. The human rights group said Iran, Saudi Arabia and Iraq put more people to death than ever last year. The number of countries that reported carrying out executions stood at 15, a record low, it added. The group's April 8 report also touched upon the high-profile case of Iwao Hakamata, a former death row inmate in Japan who was exonerated in a retrial last year after serving 48 years in prison. The annual document listed China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Yemen as the countries that carried out the most executions. It described China as 'the world's lead executioner.' Figures for China, North Korea and Vietnam were estimates because they do not disclose death penalty statistics. Only two confirmed executions from these countries were included in the 2024 report. Based on the known figures, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Iraq accounted for 91 percent of all executions around the world. Drug-related offences accounted for 42 percent of capital punishment cases. China, Iran and Saudi Arabia put more people to death than other countries for drug trafficking and drug use. Amnesty, noting that the International Covenants on Human Rights stipulates the death sentence should be imposed only for the 'most serious crimes,' took issue with those countries for using the death penalty in drug cases. It said they were 'violating international law.' It also condemned countries, including Japan, for handing the death sentence to people suffering from mental or intellectual disabilities, which it called a violation of international law. WORLD WITNESSED HAKAMATA'S VICTORY The number of countries that still carry out executions stood at 15, down one from 2023 and the lowest on record, according to Amnesty International. Armed conflict made it impossible to maintain records for Palestine, which is believed to execute people on a continual basis. According to the report, 145 countries, or three-quarters of all countries and territories, had fully or virtually abolished the death penalty by the end of 2024. Japan, which keeps capital punishment on its books while the government maintains it has overwhelming 'public support' for the practice, has not carried out a hanging since July 2022. This marks the longest hiatus since the Justice Ministry in 2007 began publicly releasing the names and other details of those executed. Referring to Hakamata as 'the world's longest-serving person on death row,' the report emphasized that prosecutors repeatedly filed motions against a retrial, which meant it took 'close to 10 years' for the process to begin. The report lambasted Japan for 'still seeking the death penalty as a possible punishment' during the retrial. Amnesty International, referring to the street across Japan calling for Hakamata's release, said 'the world witnessed the power of campaigning' when Hakamata was acquitted after a retrial in 2024. 'It is evident that the states that retain the death penalty are an isolated minority,' said Agnes Callamard, secretary-general of Amnesty International. 'This signals a move away from this cruel, inhuman and degrading punishment.'
21-04-2025
- Politics
Japan Panel Agrees on Need to Revise Retrial System
Tokyo, April 21 (Jiji Press)--A Japanese government advisory panel held its first meeting Monday to review the country's retrial system, following the acquittal of Iwao Hakamata after decades on death row. Members of a subcommittee under the Legislative Council agreed on the need for law revisions and decided to hear opinions from former prosecutors and judges, as well as lawyers who have handled past cases of convicts acquitted in retrials. The subcommittee has 14 members, including lawyer Hiroaki Murayama, who, as presiding judge in 2014, led Shizuoka District Court's decision to hold a retrial of Hakamata, 89, over the 1966 murder of a family in Shizuoka Prefecture, central Japan. Public calls for a review of the retrial system, which has not been revised since the country's criminal procedure law was established in 1948, have been growing since Hakamata's acquittal last year. Under the current law, the retrial process and the criteria and procedures for disclosing evidence held by investigative agencies are not clarified, leading to criticism of the retrial system as "the door that never opens." [Copyright The Jiji Press, Ltd.]
Japan Times
13-04-2025
- Politics
- Japan Times
Death penalty under renewed scrutiny in Japan
Capital punishment in Japan is under scrutiny again after the world's longest-serving death row prisoner, Iwao Hakamata, was awarded $1.4 million in compensation last month following his acquittal last year in a retrial. Stakes for wrongful convictions are high in Japan, where the death penalty has broad public support despite international criticism over how it is carried out. Here are some things to know: Widespread support Japan and the United States are the only two members of the Group of Seven industrialized economies to retain the death penalty. There is overwhelming public support for the practice, and a 2024 Japanese government survey of 1,800 respondents showed 83% saw the death penalty as "unavoidable." Of them, 62% said the families of murder victims "would never feel vindicated" if the death penalty was scrapped. But the same survey — conducted around a month after Hakamata's acquittal — also found those in favor of abolition rose from 9% five years ago to 17%. Around 70% of those opposed cited the "irrevocable" consequences of executing someone wrongfully convicted. Dozens on death row As of December 2023, some 107 prisoners were waiting for their death sentences to be carried out, the Justice Ministry said. It is always done by hanging. The law stipulates that executions must be carried out within six months of a final verdict after appeals are exhausted. In reality, however, most inmates are left on tenterhooks in solitary confinement for years — and sometimes decades — with severe consequences for their mental health. An execution chamber, with its trapdoor marked by a red square, at the Tokyo Detention Center, in an undated photo released by the Justice Ministry in August 2010. | Justice Ministry / via Reuters 'Cruel' method Hanging has been Japan's sole execution method for around a century and a half. Convicts are led to the gallows blindfolded, with their feet and hands cuffed. A trapdoor opens below them when several prison officers each press a button simultaneously in an adjacent room. None is told which button triggers the deadly mechanism. Three death-row prisoners sought an injunction against the method in 2022, calling it cruel. Critics have argued that hanging is prone to botched executions and makes for an agonizing death, although the Supreme Court has repeatedly ruled that the method isn't cruel. According to the court, capital punishment can only be considered cruel if done by "burning, crucifixion, decapitation or boiling." Recent executions More than two years have passed since Japan's last execution — reportedly the longest hiatus since 2007, when the Justice Ministry began disclosing names of those hanged. The last hanging, in July 2022, was of Tomohiro Kato, who killed seven people in 2008 when he rammed a truck into pedestrians in Tokyo's Akihabara district and then went on a stabbing spree. The high-profile executions of Aum Shinrikyo guru Shoko Asahara and 12 former members of the doomsday cult took place in 2018. Aum Shinrikyo orchestrated the 1995 sarin gas attacks on Tokyo's subway system, killing 14 people and injuring thousands more. The death penalty of Shinji Aoba, 46, whose 2019 arson attack killed 36 people at an anime studio, was finalized in January when he withdrew his appeal. 'No warning' There is widespread criticism of the system and the government's lack of transparency over the practice. Inmates are often informed of their impending death at the last minute, typically in the early morning before it happens. Some "may be given no warning at all," rights group Amnesty International once said in a report. The psychological pain of not knowing when they will be put to death prompted two prisoners to file a lawsuit against the late-notice system in 2021. No family members are allowed to witness the inmates' last moments. Still, so little information is disclosed about the system that "the public is deprived of the fundamental basis on which to form their opinions," a group of lawmakers, legal experts and crime victims said in a report in November. One possibility, the group said, is to retain the system itself but suspend its implementation pending a further review. "This is exactly what South Korea decided to do, and to date, the country isn't grappling with the rise in heinous crimes," it said.
Japan Times
31-03-2025
- Politics
- Japan Times
Japan justice minister calls for probe into 'unopenable' retrial system
Japan's justice minister has asked a legal panel to review the country's retrial system after the acquittal of the world's longest-serving death row prisoner last year heightened scrutiny of a system often labeled the "Unopenable Door." Keisuke Suzuki on Friday tasked the panel of legal experts with scrutinizing Japan's retrial process to recommend any necessary revisions, after it courted criticism for being too snail-paced to safeguard victims of wrongful convictions. Momentum for a policy change has grown since a court last year quashed the wrongful conviction of 89-year-old Iwao Hakamata, whose case took 42 years to be reopened.
CNN
25-03-2025
- CNN
World's longest-serving death row prisoner awarded $1.4 million after acquittal – that's $85 for each day
A Japanese man who spent more than 40 years on death row until he was acquitted last year has been awarded $1.4 million in compensation, a court said on Tuesday – roughly $85 for each day he was wrongfully convicted. Former professional boxer Iwao Hakamata, 89, was sentenced to death in 1968 for a quadruple murder despite repeatedly alleging that the police had fabricated evidence against him. Once the world's longest-serving death row inmate, he was acquitted after a DNA test showed that the bloodstained clothing which was used to convict him was planted long after the murders, according to Japanese public broadcaster NHK. The Shizuoka District Court confirmed to CNN that Hakamata had been awarded more than 217 million yen – a payout that represents about US$85 per day since he was found guilty. His legal representative Hideyo Ogawa described the compensation as the 'highest amount' ever handed out for a wrongful conviction in Japan, but said it could never make up for what Hakamata had suffered. 'I think the state (government) has made a mistake that cannot be atoned for with 200 million yen,' the lawyer said, according to NHK. Hakamata retired as a professional boxer in 1961 and got a job at a soybean processing plant in Shizuoka, central Japan. Five years later he was arrested by police after his boss, his boss' wife and their two children were found stabbed to death in their home. Hakamata initially admitted to the charges against him, but later changed his plea, accusing police of forcing him to confess by beating and threatening him. He was sentenced to death in a 2-1 decision by judges in 1968. The one dissenting judge stepped down from the bar six months later, demoralized by his inability to stop the sentencing. Hakamata, who has maintained his innocence ever since, would go on to spend more than half his life waiting to be hanged. New evidence led to his release in 2014 pending a retrial, which acquitted him last year. His case brought global scrutiny to Japan's criminal justice system, where conviction rates stand at 99%, according to the Ministry of Justice website, and fueled calls to abolish the death penalty in the country. Hakamata's sister Hideko, who had long campaigned for his release, told CNN last year that decades of imprisonment had wrought irreversible damage on her brother's mental health. Hakamata was 'living in his own world,' she said. 'Sometimes he smiles happily, but that's when he's in his delusion… We have not even discussed the trial with Iwao because of his inability to recognize reality.'
