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| Execution chamber and command room at Tokyo Detention Center |
A research institute affiliated with the Supreme Court has issued a report on murder trials in which capital punishment has been handed down to serve as a precedent for lay judge trials, noting the ultimate sentence is usually reserved for cases involving multiple slayings.
The Legal Training and Research Institute said Monday it compiled the research paper to look into past death sentences to provide input for lay judges hearing criminal trials.
Judges, particularly nonprofessionals, should carefully consult past cases before they decide whether to hand down the death sentence because it is extremely important to ensure fairness, given the severity of the punishment compared with a prison term, it said.
For less serious crimes, the institute called for tolerance of varying conclusions by lay judges in terms of the severity of sentences.
The lay judge system was introduced in May 2009 to handle murders and other serious crimes to include the participation of ordinary citizens in the judicial process, which was previously handled only by professional judges.
The institute's findings endorsed the Supreme Court's standards set in 1983 in the case of Norio Nagayama, who was hanged in 1997 for killing 4 people when he was a teenager. Among other factors, the so-called Nagayama standards take into consideration the number of victims, motives, brutality and social impact of the crime.
The research body examined 346 murder or robbery-murder cases between 1980 and 2009 in which the ruling was for death or life imprisonment, against the demands of prosecutors for capital punishment.
Among them, death sentences were finalized in 32 % of cases where there was only 1 victim, while the rate rose to 59 % in cases involving 2 victims and to 79 % when 3 or more people were killed.
The paper said it is "natural that criminal responsibility of the defendants becomes heavier when the number of victims is large, as human lives should be protected most under the Penal Code."
The report notes that all 10 convicted murderers who killed again after being released on parole from life prison terms were given the death sentence even if there was only 2 victim.
In 5 of 10 kidnap-for-ransom cases in which one person was killed, the defendants were sentenced to death, according to the institute.
In all 21 robbery-murder cases with three or more people slain, the defendants were given the death penalty.
In cases where the number of murder victims totaled three or more, some defendants were sentenced to life. Some of them were found to have a mental disorder, or they played a subordinate role in the crime or they had killed family members.
The institute also found an increasing trend in which courts have handed down the death sentence in murder trials of the first instance in the five-year period from 2005 compared with each 10-year period since 1955, underlining the recent tendency of harsher punishments given to convicted killers.
Between 2005 and 2009, capital punishment was handed down in 0.99 percent of murder trials of the first instance, compared with 0.2 percent during the 40-year period beginning in 1955.
In the lay judge system, 6 citizens sit with 3 professional judges to decide the facts in a case and arrive at a verdict.
Source: Japan Times, July 24, 2012
Japan's death terms rise 4-fold over 20 years
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| Execution chamber at Tokyo Detention Center |
The ratio of defendants given the death penalty for murder to all those tried on the same charge at district courts has risen by almost four times over the past 20 years, according to research conducted by an institute affiliated with the Supreme Court.
The Legal Training and Research Institute, a training facility affiliated with the top court, on Monday released a report on the research on death sentences and other legal trends before the introduction of the lay judge system. It is the 1st research of its kind in the nation.
The research was conducted by a team comprising a criminal law scholar and three judges and was aimed at providing guidelines for lay judges, who the researchers suggested should follow historical sentencing trends in capital cases.
The research covered the years from 1946 to 2009, before the introduction of the lay judge system in May 2009.
The team examined the ratio of defendants sentenced to death out of all defendants tried for murder at district courts for every decade from 1946 to 2009.
During the 1st decade from 1946 to 1954, --when the nation was still experiencing chaos after World War II--the ratio stood at 1.02 %. Over the 4 decades from 1955 to 1994, the ratio remained flat at about 0.25 %. It increased to 0.63 % for the following decade from 1995 to 2004, and for the 5-year period from 2005 to 2009, it rose to 0.99 %.
The 140-page report notes that a series of crimes committed by the Aum Supreme Truth cult, which came to light in 1995, created a tendency for judges to hand down harsher punishments.
It also said that while the number of crimes in general has been decreasing, indiscriminate mass murders resulted from unclear motives and other cases have been creating anxiety among the public.
The research also covered 346 murder or robbery-murder cases over a 30-year period from 1980 to 2009 in which prosecutors demanded the death penalty and rulings of capital punishment or terms of life in prison were later finalized.
Over the 30 years, only about 30 % of defendants for whom prosecutors had demanded capital punishment for murder or robbery-murder involving one victim had death sentences handed down and finalized, according to the report.
Source: Asia One, July 24, 2012