Japan’s legal obligations on the use of the death penalty
More inmates executed without review by Japan’s Supreme Court
16 14 12 10 8 6 4 2 0
4
1 2 2 6
1 1
4 4
2 2
1 1 1 5 4 1 2 2
1 1 1 1 1
1 3 5 3
1 1
4
4 11 4 3
Confirmed by the Supreme Court
Finalised without review by the Supreme Court
On the other hand, appeals by public prosecutors against not-guilty verdicts and non-capital sentences are permitted in Japan. In the case of Masaru Okunishi, the defendant was convicted and sentenced to death on appeal in 1969, five years after he was acquitted in his original trial (the conviction was based largely on dubious testimony about bite marks on a bottle stopper and Okunishi’s dental structure). In a more recent example, prosecutors appealed against the acquittal of Masahiro Shirahama by the Kagoshima District Court in a capital trial in 2010, but their appeal was dismissed when the defendant died before the appeal proceedings started.72
David T. Johnson, “Capital Punishment without Capital Trials in Japan’s Lay Judge System”, Asia Pacific Journal, Vol.8, Issue 52 (December 27, 2010), Available at
http://www.japanfocus.org/-David_T_-Johnson/3461.
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