FEATURED POST

As clock ticks toward another Trump presidency, federal death row prisoners appeal for clemency

Image
President-elect Donald Trump’s return to office is putting a spotlight on the U.S. penitentiary in Terre Haute, which houses federal death row. In Bloomington, a small community of death row spiritual advisors is struggling to support the prisoners to whom they minister.  Ross Martinie Eiler is a Mennonite, Episcopal lay minister and member of the Catholic Worker movement, which assists the homeless. And for the past three years, he’s served as a spiritual advisor for a man on federal death row.

Japan rules out ending death penalty despite panel's call for review

The Japanese government on Thursday ruled out abolishing the death penalty, rejecting calls by domestic legal experts for a review amid international pressure to end executions.

"The government thinks it is not appropriate to abolish" the death penalty, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshimasa Hayashi told a press conference. 

"The death penalty is unavoidable for a person who has committed an extremely grave and atrocious crime."

On Wednesday, a 16-member panel, including a former top prosecutor, a former top police official and academics, proposed to the Cabinet and parliament the establishment of a conference body to discuss whether to maintain the death penalty.

Citing the case of Iwao Hakamada, an 88-year-old man who spent nearly half a century on death row before being acquitted in a recent retrial over a 1966 quadruple murder, the panel's report said, "Once a mistake occurs, it takes a very long time to correct it."

The panel, set up in February with the Japan Federation of Bar Associations serving as its secretariat, also said abolishing the death penalty system is an international trend.

Japan and the United States are the only Group of Seven industrialized nations still handing down capital sentences. 

The European Union, which bars countries with the death penalty from joining, has been vocal in calling on Japan to review its stance.

At the end of 2023, 144 countries had abolished the death penalty in law or practice, according to the human rights organization Amnesty International, which has also urged Japan to end the system.

Source: kyodonews.net, Staff, November 14, 2024

_____________________________________________________________________








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

— Oscar Wilde



Most Viewed (Last 7 Days)

Biden Has 65 Days Left in Office. Here’s What He Can Do on Criminal Justice.

Alabama executes Carey Dale Grayson, carries out nation's 3rd nitrogen gas execution

Singapore executes third drug trafficker in a week

Indonesia | Bali Nine prisoners to be sent home

Singapore | Imminent unlawful execution for drug trafficking

Mary Jane Veloso to return to Philippines after 14-year imprisonment in Indonesia

USA | Pro-Trump prison warden asks Biden to commute all death sentences before leaving

Texas Supreme Court Rules that a New Execution Date Can be Set for Robert Roberson