UNMASKING CAPITAL PUNISHMENT / Justice ministers torn between duty, beliefs
Written by Writer on Sunday, October 19th, 2008
UNMASKING CAPITAL PUNISHMENT / Justice ministers torn between duty, beliefs
The Yomiuri Shimbun
Former Justice Minister Okiharu Yasuoka announces the executions of three convicts on Sept. 11.
This is the ninth and final installment in a series of articles focusing on capital punishment. Under the lay judge system starting in May, lay judges chosen from among the public will participate in decision-making processes that could result in death sentences.
In August 1991, then Justice Minister Megumu Sato was faced with the ultimate decision of whether to spare the lives of two convicts on death row.
Sato said he scrutinized their death warrants, but had already made up his mind not to sign them.
He returned the bulky trial records of the inmates he received two weeks previously to a senior official of the ministry’s Criminal Affairs Bureau in his office at the ministry, telling the official to “take them away.”
Sato, 84, was chief priest at a temple of the Shinshu Otaniha sect of Jodo Shinshu Buddhism at the time.
“Buddhism teaches us that it isn’t permissible to take a person’s life,” Sato reflected. “I knew I’d be faced with the issue of capital punishment at some point when I was appointed justice minister.”
In contrast, former Justice Minister Takao Jinnouchi, a believer in the Hongwanji sect of the same school of Buddhism, made the decision to sign execution orders for three death row convicts in September 1999.
These men had served sentences for murder and killed again while on parole.
Jinnouchi thought about how terrified the victims must have been and persuaded himself that he had to sign the warrants to ” preserve the legal order.”
Jinnouchi, 75, visited the Tsukiji Hongwanji temple in Tokyo with his wife a few days after the executions. He reserved the main worship hall of the temple to hold a service for the victims and the executed men, and prayed for them while monks chanted sutras.
Ten or more people were regularly executed annually in the period from the end of World War II to 1976. The number dropped after this, with an average of 1.4 executions carried out in the years to 1992.
“In the late 1970s, a series of retrials were held for death row inmates, and questioning of the capital punishment system intensified,” a senior justice ministry official explained. “The decline in the number of death sentences created an atmosphere in which it was difficult to ask the justice minister to sign.”
The longest postwar period in which no executions were carried out lasted for three years and four months from November 1989. This period including Sato’s 10-month tenure.
The next execution was conducted in 1993, and signed off by then Justice Minister Masaharu Gotoda.
“It’s a job that places [the incumbent] under heavy mental strain, but order would be shaken in the nation if justice ministers shirked their responsibility,” Gotoda said.
Mayumi Moriyama, a former justice minister who ordered the execution of five death row prisoners between 2001 and 2003 has strong views about the mind-set of justice ministers.
“People who have made the decision not to sign death warrants shouldn’t accept the post of justice minister,” Moriyama, 80, said.
Another former justice minister held a firm conviction not to authorize executions.
Seiken Sugiura, 74, a adherent of the Shinshu Otaniha religious sect, said at his inauguration press conference in October 2005: “I won’t sign. It’s a matter of my conscience, religious beliefs and philosophy.”
Although Sugiura quickly backtracked on this remark, no execution was carried out during his 11-month term.
Not a single year has passed since 1993 without an execution. But opposition to the action has made it customary not to hold executions during Diet sessions and thus avoiding situations in which justice ministers are pressed to give explanations. In some cases, executions were carried out shortly before justice ministers resigned from the post.
On Sept. 11, 10 days after former Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda announced his resignation, former Justice Minister Okiharu Yasuoka read out the names of three death row convicts who were executed that morning.
“The [Liberal Democratic Party] presidential election has already started, but I decided to quietly carry out my duty, regardless of what [political] period we are in,” Yasuoka, 69, said in the ministry’s press room.
It was Yasuoka’s predecessor, former Justice Minister Kunio Hatoyama, who was the first minister to publically announce the names of executed convicts.
Hatoyama, 60, ordered a total of 13 executions between December last year and August–signing the death warrants of prisoners every two months or so, regardless of the Diet situation.
He held a press conference on each occasion and gave his thoughts on the cases.
Senior officials at the ministry agree that Hatoyama brought about great change in the practice of carrying out executions.
This increase in rulings condemning people to death in recent years means that 103 prisoners wait on death row at present.
With the introduction of the lay judge system only seven months away, Yasuoka urged that the system be made more open.
“A degree of transparency in the current execution system is needed so that lay judges can make clear decisions about sentencing a person to death.”
(Oct. 19, 2008)
