128 Convicts on Death Row Live On in Japan

In Japan, convicts on death row are to be executed within six months after the death sentence is final and binding and once the Minister of Justice so orders execution must take places within five days, so stipulates the Criminal Procedure Code.

As of last month's end, 128 convicts on death row are "awaiting" execution. Many have died of ailment and age. A 67-year-old convict died of liver cancer in the Nagoya Detention Center July 2014. He had his colorectal cancer operated in March; the cancer spread to the liver and was under treatment within the center.

Now, so many convicts on death penalty are surviving execution in Japan largely for two reasons.

One, court procedures often work in their favor. The right of petition for retrial applies to all convicts regardless of the penalty and the Justice Ministry has an unspoken rule not to execute convicts on death row while such a petition is in motion. A petition can be refilled time and again as if to procrastinate execution.

When a convict on death row has accomplice(s), his/her or their trial(s) must close before his execution, as his testimony might affect such trial(s).

Two, Justice Ministers have their way of prolonging execution on moral grounds. Mr. Masatake Sugiura, a lawyer by profession and Justice Minister in 2005-06, stated in his inauguration interview that he "would not sign the execution order" for reasons of "the mind and religion". He later retracted his statement but never ordered execution during his 10-month tenure. Justice Minister Keiko Chiba, herself against the death penalty, ordered and witnessed two executions. She later commented there ought to be a thorough reexamination of the problem of the death penalty.

The Diet Members Union on Abolishing Death Penalty, chaired by Shizuka Kamei, is studying a bill for the abolition of death penalty coupled with the introduction of imprisonment for life.