Death Penalty News

OSAKA, Japan — Ryuji Kobayashi, a death row inmate convicted of leading a brutal 2006 double murder that involved burying victims alive, has died in custody, prison officials said. He was 41. Officers at the Osaka Detention House discovered Kobayashi unresponsive in his cell during a routine morning patrol, with a futon cover wrapped around his neck. He was pronounced dead shortly after being transported to a hospital. While an autopsy is pending to determine the exact cause of death, the Justice Ministry indicated there were no immediate signs of a struggle or self-inflicted injury.

Dubbed the “Twitter Killer”, Takahiro Shiraishi trawled social media for posts by suicidal young women and lured them to his apartment outside Tokyo. Before being caught in 2017, he had murdered nine people, including three teenage girls, who he also raped and mutilated. His Twitter handle loosely translated as “hangman”.

ROME—The sister of an acquitted former inmate who spent decades on death row expressed hopes at an international conference here on Oct. 28 that her brother's story could help end the death penalty and wrongful convictions.  Hideko Hakamada, 92, sister of Iwao Hakamada, spoke at the International Meeting for Peace, titled “Daring Peace” this year, which included a discussion on the death penalty. She talked about her brother and her efforts to help clear his name.  Iwao Hakamada, 89, was sentenced to death for the 1966 murder of a family of four in Shizuoka Prefecture and later acquitted in a retrial. 

The archbishop of Tokyo, Cardinal Isao Kikuchi, is renewing calls for abolition of the death penalty  in Japan and for clemency for 2 men, 1 convicted of murder and already sentenced to death, the other awaiting sentencing.  In 2023, Masanori Aoki stabbed 2 women in the city of Nakano and then shot 2 policemen with a hunting rifle. His defense team asked for a lesser sentence, saying the man suffered from schizophrenia, but the sentencing court imposed the death penalty on Oct. 14. 

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.

TOKYO – Japan’s criminal justice system is under intense scrutiny after the courts, within months, twice accused law enforcement officials of fabricating evidence in their zealous pursuit of convictions. The damning indictments in two cases – one involving murder, the other economic security – expose flaws in a system that prides itself on a 99.8 per cent conviction rate. On Oct 8, 2024, the nearly six-decade ordeal of former boxer Iwao Hakamada finally concluded when prosecutors decided not to appeal a retrial verdict that had exonerated him of four murders in 1966.

TOKYO — Japan on Friday executed a man dubbed the "Twitter killer" who murdered and dismembered nine people he met online, in the nation's first enactment of the death penalty since 2022. Takahiro Shiraishi, 34, was hanged for killing his young victims, all but one of whom were women, after contacting them on the social media platform now called X. He had targeted users who posted about taking their own lives, telling them he could help them in their plans, or even die alongside them. Justice Minister Keisuke Suzuki said Shiraishi's crimes, carried out in 2017, included "robbery, rape, murder... destruction of a corpse and abandonment of a corpse".

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."

Japan has taken a major step toward revising the country's retrial system, which has been criticized as making the process of overturning a wrongful conviction excessively lengthy. But the prospects of swift reform are unclear, with fierce opposition from within the Justice Ministry to one of the key proposed changes -- restricting objections from prosecutors against court decisions ordering retrials. On March 28, the Legislative Council, a ministry advisory body, was asked by Justice Minister Keisuke Suzuki to look into the issue.

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.

A Japanese man wrongly convicted of murder who was the world's longest-serving death row inmate has been awarded more than 217 million yen in compensation, an official said Tuesday. The payout represents 12,500 yen for each day of the more than four decades that Iwao Hakamada spent in detention, most of it on death row when each day could have been his last. It is a record for compensation of this kind, Japanese media said. The former boxer, now 89, was exonerated last year of a 1966 quadruple murder after a tireless campaign by his sister and others.

Among the Japanese, public support for the death penalty remains rock solid. More than 80% of respondents have expressed approval for it. The Cabinet Office has released the results of a public opinion survey on the death penalty. Of the respondents, 83.1% said that having the death penalty is "unavoidable," while 16.5% said that it should be abolished. The Cabinet Office cautioned that simple comparisons cannot be made because the survey method has changed from in-person interviews to questionnaires sent by mail. Nonetheless, the new survey showed that support for the death penalty increased by 2.3% since the previous opinion poll in 2020.

An advisory panel will start discussions later this month to review the country's retrial system for criminal cases, Justice Minister Keisuke Suzuki said Friday. Suzuki told a news conference that he will ask the Legislative Council, which advises the minister, to review the system on March 28. Critics say that the retrial system needs to be changed because it prolongs trials as many rules are not clearly stated in the law.  Related provisions in the Code of Criminal Procedure have not been revised since it was established in 1948.

An 88-year-old Japanese man who at one point was the world’s longest-serving death row inmate has been presented with a rosary blessed by Pope Francis. Archbishop Isao Kikuchi of Tokyo recently visited Iwao Hakamada, a former boxer and convert to Catholicism, to make the presentation of the papal gift to the now officially innocent octogenarian. Following his release from prison in 2014 because of new DNA evidence – after 48 years on death row – Hakamada still wasn’t officially proclaimed innocent until his definitive acquittal a decade later.

The vast majority of the public continues to endorse the country's death penalty system, according to a recent government survey. In the Cabinet Office's survey of 1,815 people between October and December, 83.1% said that the system is “unavoidable.” The percentage of respondents giving that answer exceeded 80% for the fifth consecutive time. When asked about whether they’d support abolishing the death penalty in the future if “circumstances change,” 34.4% of the 1,508 respondents who said the death penalty system is “unavoidable” answered in favor.

Hideko Hakamada’s brother Iwao was sentenced to death for murder in Japan in 1968. She campaigned tirelessly for his release as he spent nearly five decades on death row, being described as the world’s longest-serving death row prisoner.   In September 2024, Hakamada was acquitted after a retrial – a court ruling that the evidence that incriminated him was fabricated. Here, 92-year-old Hideko celebrates her brother’s long-awaited freedom. 

A Japanese man acquitted of a 1966 quadruple murder in a retrial is set to file a lawsuit against the state for defamation after the prosecutor general called the ruling that found him not guilty "unacceptable," his lawyers said Thursday.  Iwao Hakamada, 88, was acquitted by the Shizuoka District Court last September after spending nearly half a century on death row before new evidence led to his release in 2014. He was recognized that year as the world's longest-serving death row prisoner. 

When Chiaki Kasai set out to make a documentary about Iwao Hakamada, a Japanese man who was acquitted in a retrial of a 1966 quadruple murder case after spending more than four decades on death row, she hoped to tell the story of his life as a promising young boxer before his life was upended by tragedy. It was a marked departure from the fascination with Hakamada as a presumed killer as a starting point, with the film describing a pugilist driven by ambitions of building a professional sporting career.

Iwao Hakamada's Trial by Ordeal Iwao Hakamada, a former Japanese professional boxer, became one of the most prominent symbols of judicial miscarriage after spending more than four decades on death row for a crime he always maintained he did not commit. His case, marked by allegations of forced confessions, fabricated evidence by the police, and prosecutorial misconduct, has drawn international attention to Japan's legal system.