The Death Penalty in Japan
More generally, the quality of capital defence in Japan leaves much to be desired, not only because the rules of criminal procedure confer many advantages on law enforcement officials, but also because the systems for training defence lawyers remain rudimentary, and because the culture of defence lawyering in Japan sometimes discourages aggressive advocacy of the defendant’s interests. Tere have been some improvements in defence lawyering since the advent of Japan’s lay judge system in 2009, but there remains much room for improvement.66
The Right of Appeal Te Right of Appeal is guaranteed under Article 14(5) of the ICCPR:
Everyone convicted of a crime shall have the right to his conviction and sentence being reviewed by a higher tribunal according to law.
Safeguard six adopted by the UN Economic and Social Council in 1984, states: “Anyone sentenced to death shall have the right to appeal to a court of higher jurisdiction, and steps should be taken to ensure that such appeals shall become mandatory.”
Te importance of a mandatory right of appeal was confirmed by the UN Economic and Social Council in its resolution 1989/6467
. Furthermore, in resolution 2005/59, the UN Commission
on Human Rights urged all states that still maintain the death penalty “[t]o ensure that all legal proceedings, including those before special tribunals or jurisdictions, and particularly those related to capital offences, conform to the minimum procedural guarantees contained in Article 14 of the ICCPR.”68
Japanese law and practice: no system of mandatory appeal
Appeal to a higher court against a death sentence is not mandatory in Japan, despite repeated recommendations by the Committee against Torture69
and the Human Rights Committee70 . Te
government of Japan insists that a mandatory appeal system is unnecessary because most defendants do exercise their right to appeal. But the numbers are troubling. Of the first 15 death sentences imposed by lay judge panels in Japan, three (20 per cent) became finalised after defendants withdrew their appeals. Moreover, persons sentenced to death in Japan who withdraw their appeals tend to be executed more quickly than non-volunteers (these inmates seldom file requests for retrial or pardon either). As the graph below shows, more than 30 per cent of the death sentences carried out in Japan between 1993 and 2012 were never reviewed by the Supreme Court. By comparison, only 11 percent of death-sentenced persons who have been executed in the United States hastened their own execution by abandoning their appeals.71
66
Judge System], Sekai, No. 819 (July 2011), pp. 266-275 67
Meredith Martin Roundtree, “‘I’ll Make Tem Shoot Me’: Accounts of Death Row Prisoners Advocating for Execution”, Law & Society Review, Vol.46, No.3 (2012), pp.589-622
68 69 70 71
26
David T. Johnson, “Keiji Bengoshi to Saibanin Seido: Henkaku no Naka no Toso” [War in a Season of Slow Revolution: Defense Lawyers and Japan’s Lay Note 7 above at paragraph 1(b)
See also Nicholas Henry v. Jamaica, paragraph 8.4., CCPR/C/64/D/610/1995, 21 October 1998 paragraph 20, CAT/C/JPN/CO/1, 3 August 2007 paragraph 17, CCPR/C/JPN/CO/5, 30 October 2008
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68