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| Main Gallows at Tokyo's Detention Center |
The administrative procedures that take place between a death sentence and execution in Japan have been revealed through a freedom-of-information request filed by the Mainichi.
The Ministry of Justice handed the Mainichi 282 pages of documents relating to the execution of 12 inmates since 2009, marking the first time that the steps surrounding an execution have been made public. However, 147 of the pages -- more than 1/2 -- were completely blacked out.
The signing of an execution order by the justice minister is a concept that the public has come to understand as protocol through media reports, but according to the newly disclosed information, the justice minister does not sign execution orders. Rather, he or she signs another type of document titled "assessment results of the execution case."
The actual execution order bears the name of the justice minister, with the minister's official seal affixed next to it. However, it is not the job of the justice minister to affix the seal.
"Generally, someone affixes the minister's official seal at the orders of the head of the administrative division," a ministry official said.
There are 2 execution approval routes that must be taken after an inmate is sentenced to death, that involve a total 13 people. One, called the "criminal route," consists of obtaining the signatures of the justice minister and vice justice minister on the aforementioned "assessment results of the execution case," as well as the seals of 5 justice ministry bureaucrats.
The other is the "correction and rehabilitation route," which requires the seals of 6 officials -- including that of a senior official at the ministry's Correction Bureau that oversees the detention center in which the inmate is held, and an official at the ministry's Rehabilitation Bureau that handles requests for pardons -- on a document that effectively serves as the execution proposal.
The Mainichi found that in the case of every execution, the documents covering the execution proposal, assessment, approval, and order were dated on the same day, with the execution itself taking place 2 to 4 days later.
The most recently disclosed documents involve 7 former death-row inmates from 2009, 2 from 2010, and 3 from 2012. The Mainichi lodged a request in early April this year for access to the papers including the execution proposals, orders and instructions pertaining to the 3 people who had been executed the previous month, in addition to paperwork surrounding the executions that took place between 2009 and 2011. The decision was made to grant access to the information by early May.
Because no executions took place in 2011 -- for the 1st time in 19 years -- there is no information from that year. The total number of pages released came to 282, with full disclosure on 58 pages, and partial disclosure on 77. Meanwhile, 147 pages had been completely blacked out.
Previous attempts have been made to shed light on the procedures following a death sentence. In 2005, a Tokyo lawyer, among others, filed a lawsuit against the justice ministry after their requests for access to paperwork for executions in 2003 and prior resulted in mostly blacked-out documents; the courts ruled against the plaintiffs in 2009. That same year, the operator of a website published online an execution order from 2008 said to have been released by the ministry.
Source: The Mainichi, June 1, 2012
Experts seek transparency in decisions to enforce death penalty
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| Execution chamber at Tokyo's Detention Center |
Details about how Japan's death penalty is carried out have been kept confidential for many years. Death penalty drafts and execution orders recently released by the Justice Ministry in response to a freedom-of-information request from the Mainichi are stamped "secret."
Takeshi Tsuchimoto, a former prosecutor and now a professor emeritus of criminal law at the University of Tsukuba, hailed the Justice Ministry for disclosing nine kinds of documents on death penalties meted out to 12 people since 2009, saying the ministry understood the broad scope of administrative documents subject to public disclosure and responded to the public's right to know.
But he says making public the names of ministry officials involved in approving executions could have consequences. He also says there is also room for debate on the extent to which ministry should disclose information in response to requests without public purpose.
A senior Justice Ministry official said the scope of information disclosure noticeably broadened after then Justice Minister Kunio Hatoyama started releasing the names of death-row inmates to be executed.
Hatoyama, who ordered 13 death-row inmates to be hanged during a roughly yearlong tenure as justice minister, recalled that he signed death penalty documents after carefully reading records on the 13 people and being convinced that justice could not be fulfilled unless the perpetrators of such heinous crimes were executed.
Hatoyama also said he released the names of the death-row inmates because "I felt it was necessary for the Japanese public to recognize that justice prevailed." He added that it was an afterthought that institutional information disclosure has further progressed since his time as justice minister.
But Seiken Sugiura, who did not issue any execution orders during about 11 months in office as justice minister between 2005 and 2006, says the current state of information disclosure concerning the death penalty is too closed. In order for Japan to hold full-scale debate on capital punishment, he says, the nation should emulate some states in the United States, where crime victims and media personnel can watch executions, thereby achieving greater transparency.
Lawyer Kei Shinya, who in 2004 sought information disclosure in a trial over death penalty documents prior to 2003 but was unsuccessful, points to the reality that lay judges are now required to make judgments on the pros and cons of the death penalty.
"It is the state's responsibility to fully provide data such as execution procedures to people whom the state entrusts to make grave decisions," he says, adding that the central government should further disclose information to help the public judge if death by hanging does not really constitute a "cruel" punishment as forbidden by Article 36 of the postwar Japanese Constitution.
Hidemichi Morosawa, a professor of criminology at Tokiwa University, says many victims wonder why the death sentence is not meted out to death-row inmates even six months after a death sentence is finalized, as stipulated by the Code of Criminal Procedure. He says there should be documents to explain why the death penalty is not carried out after six months and the government should explain the reasons to victims.
Source: The Mainichi, June 1, 2012