Death Penalty News

In a major blow to Japan’s human rights record, the country has resumed executions after nearly three years, putting Takahiro Shiraishi to death on Friday 27 June 2025. This marked the end of a two-year, 11-month hiatus – the longest pause since the Ministry of Justice began publicly disclosing the names and crimes of death row inmates in 2007. With this execution, Japan has reaffirmed its place within the shrinking group of nations that continue to execute their captive citizens.

The death penalty, Japan's ultimate punishment, has been carried out in the country for the first time in two years and 11 months . It is essential to pause and thoroughly reconsider whether this system should be kept or abolished. As long as humans judge other humans, miscarriages of justice can never be entirely prevented. The case of Iwao Hakamada, 89, who was sentenced to death and later acquitted in a retrial, is a stark reminder of that reality. Hakamada was confined for nearly half a century, and the relentless fear of execution eroded his mental health. In his retrial, the court acknowledged that investigative authorities had fabricated evidence against him.

From the outside, the Tokyo Detention House looks much like the other tall, austere buildings native to Katsushika City, but its drab facade and tree-lined grounds conceal a far more sinister reality. It is here that Japan's most deplorable criminals are plucked from their cells and hanged underneath fluorescent lights in a cold, bare wood-panelled room.  There is a chillingly theatrical element to how the condemned are executed in the East Asian country - the only member of the G7 besides the US that still metes out capital punishment.  Shackled prisoners are led past a small gold statue of Kannon, a Buddhist figure associated with compassion, as they enter their sterile execution chamber. 

His hands never trembled, not even as he slipped the noose around the necks of several condemned men. But now, years later, their faces return to him -- uninvited, every day. Currently in his 70s, a Japanese man who worked as a prison guard for many years at a detention center in eastern Japan, remains anonymous for privacy reasons. One morning in the 1990s, he was informed he was to be that day's "noose handler," assisted by four other prison officers and several staff in the task of hanging death row inmates. "I knew this was a road I'd have to go down eventually if I worked at a detention center," the man said in an interview with Kyodo News. "You don't have any power to veto the decision."

Stakes for wrongful convictions are high in Japan, where the death penalty has broad public support despite criticism over how it is carried out. Tokyo: Capital punishment in Japan is under scrutiny again after the world's longest-serving death row prisoner, Iwao Hakamada, was awarded $1.4 million in compensation this week following his acquittal last year in a retrial. Stakes for wrongful convictions are high in Japan, where the death penalty has broad public support despite international criticism over how it is carried out.

OSAKA—The Osaka High Court on March 17 rejected a lower court’s dismissal of a lawsuit filed by death-row inmates over the constitutionality of executing prisoners hours after they are notified they will die. The case was sent back to the Osaka District Court, which had rejected the lawsuit in April 2024. In Japan, condemned inmates are executed on the day they are notified that their death sentences will be carried out. Two death-row inmates sued the government over this same-day process, saying it violates Article 31 of the Constitution.

Hideko Hakamada, 91, fought half her life to free her brother - the world's longest serving death row inmate When a court declared Iwao Hakamada innocent in September , the world's longest-serving death row inmate seemed unable to comprehend, much less savour the moment. "I told him he was acquitted, and he was silent," Hideko Hakamada, his 91-year-old sister, tells the BBC at her home in Hamamatsu, Japan. "I couldn't tell whether he understood or not."

Iwao Hakamada, whose death sentence was finalized in 1980, could have been executed at any time since then. But under a capital punishment system where rules are broken and procedures are opaque, Hakamada survived long enough to finally win an acquittal in a retrial on Sept. 26. It remains unclear why some death row inmates face execution much earlier or later than other condemned prisoners.

TOKYO (Kyodo) -- The inhumane treatment of inmates who have been sentenced to death has come under increased scrutiny in Japan, with legal experts criticizing authorities for giving little to no warning of an impending execution and denying those on death row basic human contact. Japan has no established regulations regarding how much warning an inmate on death row should be given before they are sent to the gallows, but anecdotal evidence shows they were informed the day before at least until the 1970s. Currently, inmates are notified just one or two hours before they are hanged.

Since May, Saudi Arabia has executed 28 people on drug-related charges, according to a tally based on official statements, up from just two in all of 2023 The two Egyptian inmates ate a routine final dinner in a prison in northern Saudi Arabia, not knowing they would be put to death for drug crimes the next morning.  Their abrupt killing this month extended a recent spree of drug-related executions in Saudi Arabia, after officials ended a moratorium on the death penalty for such crimes less than two years ago. 

The Osaka District Court on Monday dismissed a lawsuit by death row inmates that claimed same-day notifications of executions violate the Constitution — the first ruling of its kind. The plaintiffs filed the lawsuit against the government in hopes of sparking a wider discussion on the rights of death row prisoners. They also sought ¥22 million in compensation and plan to appeal to a higher court.

It doesn't matter what side of the capital punishment argument a person falls on, some conversations are universally important to have. That includes what it's really like for those who have gotten a date for their execution. Before that conversation, though, there are a few important things worth noting — like the fact that for many people, execution comes only after years behind bars and oftentimes, in solitary confinement.

The following article was Google translated from the Japanese. Read the original article here .   On the 28th, a lawsuit was concluded at the Osaka District Court in which two death row inmates demanded a total of 22 million yen in damages from the government, alleging that the practice of announcing executions on the same day violates the constitution.  The verdict will be handed down on April 15 next year. The plaintiffs pointed out that until the mid-1970s, there were several cases in which notice was given up to the previous day. 

To this day Hussain trembles when he thinks of the time, and the experiences he had still gives him nightmares. Like many others who are prisoners of the death row, Hussain himself believes that being alive there is a fate worse than death “Who eats when they are sitting on death row, waiting to die?” Iqbal Hussain, who is now living his life freely in his family home in Mandi Bahauddin, had been on death row for 20 years, until miraculously just a day before his execution was carried out, his death sentence was revoked.

As Saudi Arabia continues to issue and carry out death sentences, ranking prominently among the top five countries with the highest execution rates, the world observes the World Day Against the Death Penalty on October 10, 2023, under the theme "Execution: Irreversible Torture." For the second consecutive year, the general theme of International Day focuses on examining the relationship between the implementation of the death penalty and torture, as well as harsh and inhumane punishments and treatments. In addition to what detainees who are sentenced to death endure from the moment of their arrest until the issuance of the verdict, they face widespread violations that constitute continuous torture for them even until the execution. These violations do not cease after the execution, with the psychological torture experienced by their families.

Idaho U.S. District Judge B. Lynn Winmill has ruled in favor of death-row-prisoner Gerald Pizzuto, indefinitely pausing his March 2023 execution date, and granting him a hearing in his claim that the state of Idaho violates his Constitutional right against cruel and unusual punishment by repeatedly scheduling execution dates while knowing the state does not have the means to carry it out. “As Pizzuto describes it,” Judge Winmill wrote, “defendants’ repeated rescheduling of his execution is like dry firing in a mock execution or a game of Russian roulette… With each new death warrant comes another spin of the revolver’s cylinder, restarting the 30-day countdown until the trigger pulls. Not knowing whether a round is chambered, Pizzuto must relive his last days in a delirium of uncertainty until the click sounds and the cylinder spins again.”

Judge: Death row inmate's constitutional rights against cruel and unusual punishment may have been violated after officials repeatedly scheduled his execution BOISE, Idaho — A federal judge in Idaho ruled a longtime death row inmate may have a legal claim that the state violated his constitutional rights against cruel and unusual punishment when officials repeatedly scheduled his execution without the means to carry it out. Idaho has sought to execute Gerald Pizzuto by lethal injection five times since his 1986 first-degree murder conviction, including three times in the past two years. U.S. District Judge B. Lynn Winmill for the District of Idaho last week rejected the state’s request to dismiss Pizzuto’s claim that rescheduling his execution several times violated his Eighth Amendment rights, allowing the case to move forward.

The following story was published on April 25, 2023, prior to the execution of Tangaraju Suppiah, a 46-year-old Singaporean convicted of conspiracy to traffick marijuana. The Singaporean government is very secretive about how it carries out the death penalty, so little is known about what death penalty inmates experience in the last few days before their executions.  As the state prepares to execute Tangaraju Suppiah , a 46-year-old Singaporean convicted of conspiracy to traffick marijuana, tomorrow at dawn, the Transformative Justice Collective (TJC), a local activist group working to abolish the death penalty, recently posted some slides detailing how Tangaraju’s last few days have been spent based on information collected from his relatives. 

Yesterday, Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey sent a letter to the Alabama Department of Corrections Commissioner directing him to execute James Barber by lethal injection at any time between midnight on July 20 and 6 am on July 21. The governor’s letter was released to the media and reported by al.com yesterday afternoon, but the State did not notify Mr. Barber that his execution was scheduled until late morning today—even though the new execution protocol says he must be notified before the news media and as soon as possible once the governor sets the time frame. Alabama’s execution protocol was revised in March after the Alabama Supreme Court announced an unprecedented rule change granting the governor unrestricted discretion to set a “time frame” for carrying out executions.

A 2021 Amnesty International study found Japan to be one of just 18 countries worldwide executing prisoners. A former prison guard looks at the death penalty as it is implemented in Japan today, examining its impact on all those involved. On July 26, 2022, a death sentence was carried out at the Tokyo Detention House in Katsushika, Tokyo. The corrections officers at the facility drew on their experience and saw this event coming in advance, allowing themselves to mentally prepare themselves. This was because a little over two weeks prior something unprecedented had occurred: the shocking murder of former Prime Minister Abe Shinzō while he was delivering a speech on July 8 in the city of Nara in support of a local candidate in the House of Councillors election.