Japan: Disclosed files fail to show why convicts chosen for execution

Gallows trapdoor at Tokyo Detention Center, Japan

The Justice Ministry has put an end to its longtime policy of avoiding executions of death-row inmates while they are calling for a retrial, but who is chosen to be hanged is still shrouded in secrecy.

The hanging of a prisoner seeking a retrial requires cautious judgment, yet the Justice Ministry ordered the execution of 3 of them in 2017.

The 1st was 1 of 2 men hanged in July, marking the 1st time in 17 years that a prisoner seeking a retrial was executed.

Then, in December, another 2 men hoping for a retrial went to the gallows.

The Justice Ministry has failed to disclose the reasons the 2 inmates were selected for execution in July 2017.

Most of the pages of relevant documents obtained from the Justice Ministry by The Asahi Shimbun last year under the freedom of information law were blacked out.

The Asahi Shimbun has filed requests for but has yet to receive the documents regarding the December executions.

In addition, the death of 1 of the men in December marked the 1st execution in 20 years of an inmate on death row for a crime committed as a minor.

There are now 122 inmates on death row in Japan as of Dec. 27, according to the ministry. Among these, 95 are seeking a retrial.

7 types of document were released last year by the Justice Ministry in response to the requests filed by The Asahi Shimbun regarding the executions in July.

The other inmate executed in July did not seek a retrial. The death sentence given under the lay judge system has also been questioned because he only killed one person.

The number of inmates on death row has surpassed 120, marking an increase in excess of 70 in the last 20 years. The trend seems to have prompted the Justice Ministry to change gears to carry out executions that it previously avoided.

THE JULY HANGINGS

1 of the 2 men executed in July was Masakatsu Nishikawa, 61. He was convicted of murdering 4 female "snack" bar operators in Hyogo, Shimane and Kyoto prefectures, and assaulting a female "rakugo" comic storyteller in Osaka Prefecture, over a 1-month period since December 1991.

The other inmate, Koichi Sumida, 34, was convicted of murdering a former female colleague, who was working as a dispatch worker, in Okayama in September 2011.

According to the disclosed documents, the superintending prosecutors at the high public prosecutors offices submitted petitions to the justice minister requesting the sentences be carried out, 5 months after the death sentence was finalized for Nishikawa in June 2005 and 3 months after an execution judgment for Sumida had become final and binding in March 2013.

The move appeared to reflect the Criminal Procedure Law stipulating that the execution must be implemented within 6 months after a death sentence was finalized.

However, it's rare that convicts have been executed so quickly.

Nishikawa was sentenced to death by a district court and a high court, and the Supreme Court rejected his appeal in June 2005.

But he repeatedly requested a retrial after his death sentence was finalized.

His execution was the 1st for a death-row inmate seeking a retrial since December 1999.

Who is to be executed is decided by the Justice Ministry's Criminal Affairs Bureau but why Nishikawa and Sumida were picked to be hanged has remained unclear. The bureau chose Nishikawa and Sumida 11 1/2years and 4 years, respectively, after their sentences were finalized.

SOMBER PROCESS

Gallows at Tokyo Detention Center, Japan

The execution procedures for Nishikawa and Sumida began with a document dated July 10, 2017, titled "Kessai, Kyoran, Hokoku," (approval, display, report) and stamped by six executives of the Justice Ministry's Correction Bureau and Rehabilitation Bureau.

The document was 25 pages for 1 of the convicts and 10 pages for the other. But the ministry only disclosed 4 pages of them for each convict. A final decision and an outline for an execution order were indicated in the pages handed over. The rest was blacked out.

A document titled "Shikko Soto" (suitable for execution), also dated July 10, was created with the aim of approving the execution with seals from 7 executives of the ministry--then Justice Minister Katsutoshi Kaneda, the state minister of justice, vice minister of justice, deputy vice minister of justice, director of the Secretarial Division, director-general of the Criminal Affairs Bureau and director of the General Affairs Division of the bureau.

Within the day, the Justice Ministry then sent execution orders for the 2 convicts to the superintending prosecutors at the high public prosecutors offices. The prosecutors sent replies acknowledging they had received the orders.

The 2 inmates on death row were executed July 13, and 2 types of documents dated the same day, including an initial brief report of the execution, were created for each dead man.

But in the disclosed documents, the times of the executions, the names of witnesses apart from the detention house wardens, which are the names of the prosecutors and administrative officials of the high public prosecutors offices, the circumstances of the executions, and the 2 inmates' last testaments were blacked out.

In Japan, nearly 80 % of death row inmates are currently applying for retrial and some repeatedly file a petition. There has been a long-festering view among ministry officials that the retrial system is exploited by some inmates to delay the carrying out of their death sentences.

However, there was a case of Iwao Hakamada, now in his 80s, a former boxer who was wrongly convicted of multiple slayings in 1966. He spent decades on death row, but was released from prison in March 2014 after the Shizuoka District Court ordered a retrial.

With rising opposition against the death penalty, it remains to be seen if the Justice Ministry will disclose sufficient information to deepen discussion on the issue.

Source: The Asahi Shimbun, January 20, 2018

⚑ | Report an error, an omission, a typo; suggest a story or a new angle to an existing story; submit a piece, a comment; recommend a resource; contact the webmaster, contact us: deathpenaltynews@gmail.com.

Opposed to Capital Punishment? Help us keep this blog up and running! DONATE!

"One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed,
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted." -- Oscar Wilde

Comments

Texas | Death Sentence Overturned After 48 Years

The Court of Criminal Appeals ruled Thursday that Clarence Jordan’s punishment was unconstitutional A death sentence handed down by a Harris County jury in 1978 was overturned Thursday by the Court of Criminal Appeals. Clarence Jordan, 70, has been on Texas Death Row for almost 50 years, serving out one of the longest death sentences in the nation while suffering from intellectual disabilities and schizophrenia, his attorney told the Houston Press.

Florida | Tampa Bay man who killed wife, 3 family members sentenced to die

Shelby Nealy will be executed by the state for bludgeoning his wife’s family to death in 2018, a judge decided Friday. During a two-week sentencing trial in July, jurors heard how Nealy, 32, ended a volatile relationship with his second wife by killing her, then murdered her parents and brother a year later in an effort to never be caught. He pleaded guilty to the crimes in 2023. On July 25, the jury of three men and nine women deliberated for about two hours and voted 11-1 that Nealy should be sentenced to death. He stared straight ahead as the verdict was read.

Texas appeals court says another man's confession not enough to reconsider Broadnax execution

The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals said Tuesday it won't consider another man's confession as a reason to pause a scheduled lethal injection in three weeks. James Broadnax was convicted of murdering two Christian music producers in Garland, but his cousin, Demarius Cummings, recently confessed that he was the shooter. University of Texas School of Law Capital Punishment Clinic professor Jim Marcus said the appeals court acts as a gatekeeper for cases meeting criteria to get back in court.

US AG Authorizes Federal Prosecutors to Seek Death Penalty for Three LA Gangsters Charged with Murder

Acting U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche has directed federal prosecutors in Los Angeles to seek the death penalty against three members of a transnational street gang charged with murdering a former gang member who was cooperating with law enforcement on a racketeering and methamphetamine trafficking case, officials announced Thursday. In a letter to First Assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli on Wednesday, Blanche told prosecutors in the Central District of California they are “authorized and directed” to seek the death penalty against Dennis Anaya Urias, 27, Grevil Zelaya Santiago, 26, and Roberto Carlos Aguilar, 31. All are from South Los Angeles.

North Carolina | “Incapable to proceed”: man who killed Ukrainian refugee Iryna Zarutska ruled incompetent

DeCarlos Brown, accused of stabbing Ukrainian refugee Iryna Zarutska on a Charlotte train, has been found mentally unfit for trial, stalling death penalty proceedings. DeCarlos Brown Jr., accused of fatally stabbing 23-year-old Ukrainian refugee Iryna Zarutska on a Charlotte light rail train in August 2025, has been found mentally incapable of standing trial, according to a court motion filed 7 April in Mecklenburg Superior Court. A 29 December 2025 report from Central Regional Hospital, a state psychiatric facility in Granville County, concluded that Brown was "incapable to proceed to trial," according to the motion filed by his attorney, Daniel Roberts. The evaluation was ordered after Brown's defense raised concerns about his mental state.

20 Minutes to Death: Witness to the Last Execution in France

The following document is a firsthand account of the final moments of Hamida Djandoubi, a convicted murderer executed by guillotine at Marseille’s Baumettes Prison on September 10, 1977. The record—dated September 9—was written by Monique Mabelly, a judge appointed by the state to witness the proceedings. Djandoubi’s execution would ultimately be the last carried out in France before capital punishment was abolished in 1981. At the time, President Valéry Giscard d'Estaing—who had publicly voiced his "deep aversion to the death penalty" prior to his election—rejected Djandoubi’s appeal for clemency. Choosing to let "justice take its course," the President allowed the execution to proceed, just as he had in two previous cases during his term: Christian Ranucci , executed on July 28, 1976 and Jérôme Carrein , executed on June 23, 1977. Hamida Djandoubi , a Tunisian national, was sentenced to death for killing his former lover, Elisabeth Bousquet. He was execu...

Former FedEx driver pleads guilty to killing 7-year-old girl after making delivery at her Texas home

FORT WORTH, Texas — Tanner Lynn Horner, a former contract delivery driver for FedEx, pleaded guilty Tuesday to the 2022 capital murder and aggravated kidnapping of 7-year-old Athena Strand, a move that abruptly shifted the proceedings into a high-stakes punishment phase where jurors will decide between life imprisonment and the death penalty. Horner, 34, entered the plea in a Tarrant County courtroom as his trial was set to begin. The case was moved to Fort Worth from neighboring Wise County last year after defense attorneys argued that pretrial publicity would prevent a fair trial in the community where the girl disappeared.

Saudi Arabia | Seven executed for drug trafficking

Saudi authorities executed seven people who had been convicted of drug trafficking in a single day, state media says. The Saudi Press Agency says five Saudis and two Jordanians were found guilty of trafficking amphetamine pills into the kingdom. “The death penalty was carried out as a discretionary punishment against the perpetrators,” the agency reports, adding that the executions took place on Sunday in the Riyadh region. Since the beginning of 2026, Riyadh has executed 38 people in drug-related cases, the majority of the 61 executions carried out, according to an AFP tally based on official data.

Florida Schedules Two Executions for Late April

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — Governor Ron DeSantis has directed the Florida Department of Corrections to move forward with two executions scheduled for late April 2026, marking a significant ramp-up in the state's use of capital punishment. The scheduled deaths of Chadwick Willacy and James Ernest Hitchcock follow a series of landmark judicial rulings that have kept both men on death row for decades.

China executes Frenchman convicted in 2010 for drug trafficking

Chan Thao Phoumy, a 62-year-old Frenchman born in Laos, was executed, “despite the efforts of the French authorities, including efforts to obtain a pardon on humanitarian grounds for our compatriot”, said a foreign ministry statement. Phoumy, who was born in Laos, had been sentenced to death in 2010 following a conviction for drug trafficking. Despite sustained diplomatic pressure and formal requests for clemency on humanitarian grounds, Chinese authorities proceeded with the capital sentence. A massive drug manufacturing and distribution operation Chan Thao Phoumy was convicted for his involvement in a massive drug manufacturing and distribution operation that remains one of the largest drug-related cases in Chinese history. Phoumy and his accomplices were convicted of manufacturing approximately 8 tons of crystal methamphetamine between 1999 and 2003.

Death Penalty News

Search This Blog