Japanese Officials Reveal Execution Chambers (NYT)

[mike r]

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/28/world/asia/28tokyo.html

August 27, 2010
Japanese Officials Reveal Execution Chambers
By HIROKO TABUCHI

TOKYO — The Japanese government opened up its execution chambers to the public for the first time on Friday, taking journalists on a tour of Tokyo’s main gallows. The insides were stark: a trapdoor, a Buddha statue and a ring for the noose. The opening of the chambers was a bid by Japan’s justice minister, Keiko Chiba, to stir debate over a practice that is widely supported here. Of the Group of Eight industrialized nations, only the United States and Japan use capital punishment. Japan currently has 107 inmates on death row, and no pardon is allowed. From 2000 to 2009, Japan sentenced 112 people to death and executed 46... In July, Ms. Chiba approved — and witnessed — the hangings of two inmates convicted of murder, saying she was carrying out her duties as justice minister. Afterward, she said she still opposed capital punishment and ordered that journalists be given a tour of the facilities. She also promised to create a panel of experts to discuss the death penalty, including whether it should be stopped. The panel meets next month...

Inmates on death row are not told when they will be executed until the last minute — a procedure Japanese officials say prevents panic among inmates — and their family members and lawyers are informed only afterward, as are the news media. Inmates can remain on death row as long as 40 years, though executions over the past decade have occurred on average after about 5 years and 11 months on death row, according to the public broadcast channel NHK... A large majority of Japan’s population supports capital punishment. A recent government survey showed that 86 percent of respondents are in favor of state executions for the worst crimes... According to accounts in local news outlets, journalists were taken to the execution site in a bus with closed curtains, because its exact location is kept secret. There are seven such sites across Japan, the Justice Ministry said.

The journalists were led through the chambers, one by one: a chapel with a Buddhist altar where the condemned are read their last rites; a small room, also with a Buddha statue, where a prison warden officially orders the execution; the execution room, with a pulley and rings for the rope and a trapdoor where the condemned inmate stands; and the viewing room where officials witness the hanging. The inmate is handcuffed and blindfolded before entering the execution room, officials said. Three prison wardens push separate buttons, only one of which releases the trapdoor — but they never find out which one. Wardens are given a bonus of about $230 every time they attend an execution.

Satoshi Tomiyama, the Justice Ministry official who later briefed the foreign news outlets and others excluded from the tour, said that wardens take the utmost care to treat death row inmates fairly and humanely. The Buddha statues can be switched with an altar of the indigenous Japanese Shinto religion for followers of that faith, he said. For Christians, the prison provides a wooden cross. Inmates are given fruit and snacks before their execution, and sentences are not carried out on weekends, national holidays and around the New Year... Human rights activists criticize the conditions in which the inmates are made to await their death. They are held in solitary confinement in a cell about 50 square feet, which they leave only to exercise and bathe, both alone. They can request Japanese chess sets, but they must play alone. They are able to purchase newspapers and books, though the prison censors some of the content; articles about last month’s executions were blacked out in newspapers given to death row inmates. Relatives can visit, but friends cannot...


The trap door is outlined in red in an execution chamber at the Tokyo Detention Center.

[wellst0nev0ter]

1. I Say If They Love The Death Penalty So Much

They wouldn't be spending so much trouble to hide it from the public, imo.

[jmowreader]

2. They really need to change their execution method

If Japan used seppuku as its execution method instead of hanging, not one death sentence would ever be handed down. No one could ever bring him or herself to order someone to disembowel himself.

That's one of the reasons I support the US changing its method of execution to firing squad: right now the execution method is "we give them a shot and they never wake up." Which of course is bullshit--you're awake while the stuff that stops your breathing takes effect, because the anesthetic wears off too quickly. Change the execution method to "we're going to blow a hole the size of a bowling ball in his chest with high-powered rifles," and the dynamic changes. I'm certain one of the reasons that guy Utah shot a couple months back got the DP in the first place was the jury was thinking he'd take the needle like everyone else does.

[NutmegYankee]

3. Seppuku wouldn't work anyway. People usually avoid self terminating...

You can tell someone to kill themselves, but they have every reason to not comply. In the end, the executioner would have to do something to the condemned to carry out the sentence.

As for the methods being more gruesome - I seriously doubt that juries would be less likely to hand down death penalties. It's based more on the need to punish (and gruesome is more punishment).

[jmowreader]

4. Seppuku doesn't necessarily have to be self-terminating

Seppuku was usually stylized beheading--you cut your guts, or touched the knife, or drew a feather across your belly, and someone else cut your head off.

[NutmegYankee]

5. Beheading on it's own may not turn people off...

The french hid the guillotine after determining the crowds were enjoying it too much.

[pipi_k]

6. My mom's cooking. Although I'm not so sure how humane it would be... n/t