Death Penalty News

A Japanese man has appealed against his life sentence for fatally shooting former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, a district court spokesperson said on Wednesday. Tetsuya Yamagami, 45, sent shockwaves through Japan after he shot and killed its longest-serving prime minister with a homemade gun in July 2022, while Abe was delivering a campaign speech in the western city of Nara. “An appeal was filed,” said the spokesperson. The Osaka High Court will review the appeal. Yamagami was sentenced to life in prison by the Nara District Court on January 21, 2026, after admitting to the murder, using a homemade gun during Abe's campaign speech in Nara.

Dec. 19 (Asia Today) -- Japanese prosecutors have asked the Nara District Court to sentence Tetsuya Yamagami, 45, to life in prison for the 2022 assassination of former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, opting not to seek the death penalty. At a hearing Thursday, prosecutors condemned the killing as an attack on the rule of law, arguing that violence aimed at changing society cannot be excused regardless of motive. In closing arguments, prosecutors cited four factors supporting a severe sentence: the brutality of the method, extensive premeditation, the magnitude of social impact and what they called the irrationality of the motive.

Tetsuya Yamagami, the 45-year-old man who assassinated former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on July 8, 2022, has consistently stated that his motive was rooted in deep-seated resentment toward the Unification Church (now known as the Family Federation for World Peace and Unification, often called the "Moonies").  He blamed the church for destroying his family through coercive financial donations and emotional manipulation, and he targeted Abe as a prominent political figure he viewed as a key enabler of the church's influence in Japan due to longstanding ties with the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP). 

The gunman accused of killing Japan's former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe pled guilty Tuesday, three years after the assassination in broad daylight shocked the world. The slaying forced a reckoning in a country with little experience of gun violence, and ignited scrutiny of alleged ties between prominent conservative lawmakers and a secretive sect, the Unification Church. "Everything is true," Tetsuya Yamagami said at a court in the western city of Nara, admitting murder of the country's longest-serving leader in July 2022. The 45-year-old was led into the room by four security officials.

Suspicious item was reportedly a roughly square-shaped cardboard box about 33 centimetres (13 inches) long A pre-trial hearing for the man accused of killing Japan’s former prime minister Shinzo Abe was cancelled Monday after a suspicious object was delivered to the court, local media said. Nara District Court could not immediately confirm the reports by outlets including public broadcaster NHK, with TV footage showing people gathered outside the evacuated building in western Japan. The suspicious item was reportedly a roughly square-shaped cardboard box about 33 centimetres (13 inches) long, sealed with adhesive tape, which set off a metal detector.

The 42-year-old spent months undergoing a psychiatric assessment, which ended earlier this week with his transfer to a police station. TOKYO - The man accused of killing former prime minister Shinzo Abe was indicted on Friday, a Japanese court said, after a lengthy psychiatric review found him fit to stand trial. Tetsuya Yamagami was detained immediately after the former Japanese premier was gunned down last July while giving a campaign speech in the western city of Nara.

A woman has been sentenced to death and her three female accomplices jailed for killing two men, dumping their bodies in tanks of concrete. Pham Thi Thien Ha, 32, a resident of HCMC, was awarded the death penalty Friday by a court in neighboring Binh Duong Province for instigating the murder of two men in May last year. On the charge of "murder" and "concealing the crime," her mother, Trinh Thi Hong Hoa, 67, got 13 years in prison, while two other women, Nguyen Ngoc Tam Huyen, 41, of HCMC, received jail terms of 19 years, and Le Ngoc Phuong Thao, 30, from the Mekong Delta province of Tien Giang, 22 years. The four women, including their male victims, Tran Duc Linh, 52, from north central Nghe An Province, and Tran Tri Thanh, 27, from HCMC, were all members of a sect led by Ha. Ha told the court she had formed the sect in July 2018, composing all the rules herself. Some regulations required members to drink wine and smoke cigarettes regularly, whil...

Capital punishment is still used in Japan and prisoners are given so little warning about their executions they don't even have time to say goodbye to their family Every death is shrouded in secrecy - with those executed killed with little or no notice. Their families and loved one have no chance to say goodbye and are only told about the execution after it has happened. Capital punishment is still legal in Japan, where those condemned to die are executed by hanging. In each case, they are blindfolded and have a black hood placed over their heads before their neck is broken using a rope, which hangs over a trap door. Each execution is carried out with three prison officers present. They all press the buttons for the trap door at the same time so they don't know who is responsible. The only people the prisoner is allowed to see in their final few moments alive are prison officials and a priest. In 2018, Masakatsu Nishikawa, was executed in Japan - ...

A former senior AUM Shinrikyo member wrote a letter in English urging would-be terrorists not to carry out their planned attacks before he was executed in 2018 for his involvement in the cult's 1995 sarin nerve gas attack on the Tokyo subway system. "I want 'future terrorists' to stop their attacks on their own will before they are called 'real ones,'" Tomomasa Nakagawa wrote while on death row, according to a copy of the letter made available to Kyodo News through his lawyer in early March. "I'm very very sure that they will fall into deep despair if they see the result of their attack," says the letter, which has no date or title. Nakagawa expressed remorse for the deadly sarin attack, saying, "I have gradually realized that our attack was extremely harmful to the victims and their families." "Nothing good has happened after the Subway attack," wrote Nakagawa, who was involved in the manufacturing of t...

TOKYO -- Japan on Friday marked the 25th anniversary of a fatal nerve gas attack on Tokyo's subway. Tokyo Metro staff, relatives of victims and Transport Minister Kazuyoshi Akaba observed a moment of silence at 8 a.m. at Kasumigaseki subway station on the Hibiya Line to remember those who died in the attack. A moment of silence was observed at five other subway stations. In all, 14 people died and 6,300 were sickened after the Aum Shinrikyo cult released sarin in five subway trains during co-ordinated rush-hour attacks on March 20, 1995. Thirteen of those killed died by the end of 1996 while the 14th, Sachiko Asakawa, 56, who had been bedridden with severe brain damage following the attack, died on March 10 this year, Kyodo News reported. Thirteen Aum members, including cult leader Shoko Asahara, were executed in 2018, while others are serving prison sentences. The last fugitive was arrested in 2012. In what some believe was an attempt to divert the authorities t...

A poll conducted by the Cabinet Office in November 2019 found that 80.8% of Japanese people feel that the death penalty is sometimes necessary. In a recent opinion poll on the death penalty, 9.0% of Japanese respondents answered it should be abolished in all cases, while 80.8% said that it was necessary in some cases. The opinion poll was conducted by the Cabinet Office in November 2019, targeted at 3,000 Japanese adults.  The poll is held every five years and in the four polls since 2004, support for the death penalty has continuously topped 80%. Among those who want to see the death penalty abolished (multiple answers possible), the most common, with 50.7%, was that if there is a mistake in the judgment, it cannot be undone. On the other hand, the most common reason given by those who said that the death penalty was necessary was that the victim’s feelings had to be considered (56.6%). When asked if the death penalty should be kept or abolished in the c...

A Chinese man on death row for the 2003 slaying of a family of four was executed in Fukuoka on Thursday, marking the first inmate put to death since Justice Minister Masako Mori took office Oct. 31. Wei Wei, who had studied in Japan, was sentenced to death for the murder-robbery of a family in Fukuoka Prefecture.  The victims included an 11-year-old boy and an 8-year-old girl. “For a self-serving purpose, the convict killed all the family members. … This is an extremely ruthless crime,” Mori said during a news conference. “We regarded very seriously the killing of four innocent people.” Wei, 40, conspired with two other Chinese men and killed Shinjiro Matsumoto, 41, a clothing dealer, his wife, Chika, 40, their son, Kai, 11, and daughter, Hina, 8, on June 20, 2003, and stole about ¥37,000 in cash.  Their bodies were found the same day in Hakata Bay, handcuffed and weighted down with dumbbells. The two accomplices fled to China where they were arr...

Japanese activists opposed to capital punishment hope the visit of Pope Francis this weekend will help to soften public opinion in a nation where most people still support the death penalty. Pope Francis, who will visit Japan from Nov. 23 to 26, said last year the death penalty is neither Christian nor humane. The Vatican then formally changed its teaching to declare the death penalty inadmissible whatever the circumstances. Fewer than 1% of Japanese are Christian but activists say Francis is widely respected as a global moral leader. Opinion polls suggest about 80% of Japanese support the death penalty as a deterrent to crime. “Most Japanese don’t think of the death penalty as a legal or human rights issue,” said Shinji Oguma, secretary-general of a group of Japanese lawmakers discussing the future of the death penalty. “I hope the pope will say something that echoes in people’s hearts,” he told a news conference on Thursday. Echoing that view, Kazunori Saito, v...

TOKYO -- Japan hanged two death-row inmates Friday morning, the Justice Ministry said, in the country's first executions this year. The two were identified by the ministry as Koichi Shoji, 64, who murdered two women in Kanagawa Prefecture in 2001, and Yasunori Suzuki, 50, who killed three women in Fukuoka Prefecture between 2004 and 2005. "I ordered the executions based on careful consideration," Justice Minister Takashi Yamashita said at a press conference, noting the two "took away the lives of the victims who had done nothing wrong, for very selfish reasons." The latest hangings brought the number of executions under the government of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who took office in 2012, to 38. They follow the executions last December of two men who were involved in the 1988 murder-robbery of the president and an employee of an investment advisory company. Japan also hanged Aum Shinrikyo cult guru Shoko Asahara, 63, and 12 former members of t...