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To U.S. Death Row Inmates, Today's Election is a Matter of Life or Death

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You don't have to tell Daniel Troya and the 40 other denizens of federal death row locked in shed-sized solitary cells for 23 hours a day, every day, that elections have consequences. To them, from inside the U.S. government's only death row located in Terre Haute, Indiana, Tuesday's election is quite literally a matter of life and death: If Kamala Harris wins, they live; if Donald Trump wins, they die. "He's gonna kill everyone here that he can," Troya, 41, said in an email from behind bars. "That's as easy to predict as the sun rising."
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Japan’s longest-serving death row inmate secures retrial

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The highest court in Japan has endorsed a ruling granting the country’s longest-serving death row inmate a retrial.

Iwao Hakamada, 84, has been on death row for more than 50 years after he was convicted of robbing and murdering his boss as well as the man’s wife and two children.

He argues, however, that he confessed to the crime after being beaten by the police and that evidence was planted.

In 2014, however, a district court in the city of Shizuoka granted him a retrial. 

Prosecutors appealed, succeeding at Tokyo High Court.

The Supreme Court has since found in his favour and backed the retrial.

“The Supreme Court made a decision to uphold a retrial by overturning the decision by the Tokyo High Court to dismiss the request for retrial,” Mr Hakamada’s lawyer Yoshiyuki Todate wrote on his blog.

“The fact that a path for the resumption of a retrial was not cut off is very welcome. My hands are still shaking after hearing this. I’m really, really glad.”

Capital punishment enjoys widespread public support in Japan.

Source: irishlegal.com, Staff, January 6, 2021


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