A total of 126 people remained on death row in Japan as of Dec. 27, 2015, according to the Ministry of Justice. It is the third straight year since 2012 that the number of inmates on death row at year-end has declined.
One of those executed this year was Sumitoshi Tsuda, 63. He was convicted in a lay judge trial of murdering three people in Kawasaki in 2009. His execution marked the first time for a person who received the death penalty in a citizen judge trial to be put to death. Another six people are on death row after having been sentenced in lay judge trials.
The inmate who died of illness was Masaru Okunishi, who had been sentenced to death over a wine poisoning case in Nabari, Mie Prefecture, in 1961. He had protested that he was innocent and his ninth request for a retrial was being deliberated when he died of pneumonia at Hachioji Medical Prison in Tokyo in October. He was 89.
A total of 93 of the 127 people who have received the death penalty in Japan — including Iwao Hakamada, who was released following a court decision granting him a retrial — have sought retrials.
Those whose death sentences were finalized this year include 33-year-old Tomohiro Kato, who was convicted of a massacre in Tokyo’s Akihabara district that left seven people dead and 10 injured.
Japan’s Act on Penal Detention Facilities and Treatment of Inmates and Detainees states that the death penalty shall not be carried out on Saturdays, Sundays, public holidays, or during the year-end and New Year period. Accordingly no more death-row inmates in Japan will be executed before Jan. 3, 2016.
Source: Mainichi Image: Wikimedia Commons
Join the Conversation