To kill or not: Japanese
decide By Suvendrini Kakuchi
TOKYO - A rare essay posted on the Web by
a crime victim who does not call for the death
penalty for the culprit has become a potent symbol
for activists who face an uphill battle to abolish
Japan's capital punishment laws.
Yumiko
Yamaguchi, who was slashed on her face by a
16-year-old boy when he went on a rampage on a
public bus six years ago, is now over 50 and in a
contemplative mood. After reflection, Yamaguchi
says she does not seek retribution, only an
apology.
"While I am not yet an advocate
of abolishing capital punishment, what victims of
crime deeply wish is for the criminal to repent
what he has done and apologize to the people he
has hurt, a process that will stop heinous crimes
in the long run. This cannot
be
achieved by sentencing him to death," she wrote on
her website.
The boy, a psychiatric
patient, was arrested for murdering one passenger,
Yamaguchi's friend, and injuring several others.
Sentenced to a medical treatment facility in 2000,
he was released this March.
Yamaguchi also
writes that while she continues to grapple with
her ordeal, she realizes the death penalty will
neither ease the pain of crime victims nor stop
further crime, opinions that represent key
arguments against capital punishment.
"Attempts by victims to discuss the death
penalty in public are particularly important to us
today given that support for sending criminals to
the gallows is growing these past few years," said
Kaori Sakagami, a writer and researcher on the
death penalty in Japan.
According to
activists like Sakagami, Yamaguchi represents one
of only a handful of voices in Japan that
courageously call for a public debate on the death
penalty despite high approval ratings. Some 81% of
the public support the death penalty; of that,
60.3% said executions are necessary to deter heavy
crimes.
Yamaguchi's attempts at opening a
public discussion by hearing from the victims
themselves are urgently needed against the growing
call from sensationalist media for harsher
penalties against criminals, Sakagami said. There
are currently 150 prisoners on death row,
including those appealing their sentences, say
activists. Between 1993 and 2004, 47 criminals
were executed in Japan.
Still, activists
like Sakagami and Amnesty International Japan
point out that the call for harsher sentencing
comes at a time when crime has fallen in Japan.
The Justice Ministry's latest report cites 22,568
serious crimes in 2004, a decrease of 1,403 from
the previous year. Violent crimes, including
murder but not theft, comprise 3.5% of the total.
"Opinions from crime victims that
illustrate the futility of the death penalty are
crucial to us against growing anger over
high-profile murders committed these past few
years," said Akiko Takada, spokesperson for Forum
Against Death Penalty, a leading
anti-death-penalty group. "Media sensationalizing
murders has contributed to hardened views against
the possibility of rehabilitation."
Indeed, activists took a beating in June
when Japan reacted with hysteria as a court handed
down life imprisonment for Jose Torres Yagi, 34, a
Peruvian worker who was found guilty of sexual
molestation and murder of an eight-year-old girl
last November.
Devastated family members
are now demanding the death penalty for Yagi. They
have found support on television and in newspaper
editorials. News reports focus heavily on the
sexual abuse of the murdered girl that was
revealed by her father after the verdict.
"The court should have given more
consideration to the criteria," wrote the Asahi, a
liberal newspaper, commenting on the court verdict
and referring to the "disturbing rash of brutal
crimes against children" and "serious anxiety
among parents" that have gone unnoticed in the
court verdict.
Yet another high-profile
case that has upset activists is the media support
for a 30-year-old man known only as Hiroshi who
lobbies passionately for the death penalty for the
defendant who received life imprisonment for
raping and killing his wife and 11-month-old
daughter.
"The death penalty alone will
not alleviate my pain. I want the defendant to
come to terms with the gravity of the crime he
committed through the fear that he too may be
killed," Hiroshi told sympathetic newscasters last
month.
Hiroshi has forced the Hiroshima
High Court to review the life sentence it handed
down in 2002 to the killer, who was 18 years old
at the time and a victim of severe child abuse.
The decision by the Hiroshima court to
hold a hearing instead of simply reviewing the
dossier as is the norm reflects the heavy lobbying
by the husband and media, said Sakagami, the crime
writer.
Recent mass-media attention on the
cruelty of the crime and the pain of the victims
is a cheap tactic to gain high public ratings
rather than encourage an objective debate on the
death penalty, Sakagami said. "The danger of this
disturbing trend is [that] the emotion of crime
victims could influence court rulings as is the
Hiroshima case," she said.
Lawyer Kikuta
Koichi said some crime victims prefer the death
penalty because life imprisonment in Japan permits
the release of criminals.
"Life
imprisonment, as in the case of Yagi, provides
conditions for parole after completing a decade in
prison, which is why it is rejected by traumatized
victims, making the death penalty their only
option," he said.
While the death penalty
remains popular in Japan, lawyers on both sides of
the argument acknowledge that a national debate,
started by victims like Yamaguchi, is important.
"Victims must be able to participate in
trials and have access to the defendant. Only then
can Japan be ready to debate capital punishment,"
Koichi said.
