Singapore Death Penalty

THE contours of Singapore's legal framework and policy towards human rights are shaped and informed by State objectives and development goals. While our death penalty laws have been harshly criticised beyond our shores, Singapore's human rights are qualified by invoking "Asian values", in which community interests are prioritised over individual rights.

The courts in Singapore have consistently reaffirmed the constitutionality of our death penalty laws, signalling the importance of balancing the rights of the criminally accused against the community's right to live peacefully. It is a delicate balance between the need for strong deterrence and compassion in sentencing.

It is often easy to narrowly focus on the plight and rights of the individual, but such a stance boldly overlooks the broader implications should our death penalty laws were relaxed. As far as individual rights should be respected and not lightly encroached upon, Singaporeans should appreciate that our strict laws are a necessary deterrent and ensure that, for example, children cannot freely get drugs.

Therefore, the appeal to communal values is sound, as our society values the public good and support laws designed to serve communal interests in public morality, decency, order and health - some of which might, to a foreign observer, unduly restrict civil liberties.

It is evident to Singaporeans that our strict death penalty laws have certainly made Singapore among the safest places in the world to live in.

As such, we should be more cautious about stubbornly advocating for a rights-oriented society, as the trade-off between saving the life of an accused for the sake of a more "humane" punishment while possibly sacrificing many other potential lives is a serious reality. The right signal must be strongly sent out to the hardcore drug barons.

I for one am certain that the fight against drugs is definitely not a lost one, and this tough stance ensures our nation's sustainable future. (google news - 2/5/10)

COMMENTS =)

In our opinion, having a death penalty sends a strong message. The parliament is effectively telling our court judges they do not have enough faith in them to exercise their discretion.

That said, it is our opinion that the current supreme court chair and table (panel) is more than capable of exercising their discretion, and any tries by the lawmakers to tie their hands ought to be unacceptable.

Be that as may be, deference to the legislature is never a not unhealthy thing.

Done by: Luke JinHua, Ardy Kartolo, Leuven Kim, Keith Ho, Nathanael (10S23)

THE EFFECTS OF CAPITAL PUNISHMENT

Recent evidence suggests that capital punishment may have a significant deterrent effect, preventing as many as 18 murders for each execution, say Cass Sunstein and Adrian Vermeule of the AEI-Brookings Joint Center for Regulatory Studies.

Capital punishment presents a life-life tradeoff where a refusal to impose capital punishment could result in a significant increase in the number of deaths of innocent people. In other words, unjustified killing is exactly what capital punishment prevents, say the authors.
Recent research has strengthened the claim of Sunstein and Vermeule.

• A study based on state-level data from 1977 to 1997 finds that each execution deters five murders on average.

• Another study based on state-level data, this time from 1997-1999, found that a death sentence deters 4.5 murders and an execution deters three murders.

• Additionally, the deterrent effect of the death penalty has been found to be a function of the length of waits on death row, with a murder deterred for every 2.75 years deducted from the period before execution.

Even the Supreme Court supports the idea, say Sunstein and Vermeule:

• Using state-level date from 1960-2000, the Supreme Court made comparisons of the before-and-after effects of suspending and reinstating the death penalty; a substantial deterrent effect was found.

• After suspending the death penalty, 91 percent of states faced an increase in homicides -- and in 67 percent of states, the rate was decreased after reinstatement of capital punishment.

Furthermore, the familiar problems with capital punishment -- potential error, irreversibility, arbitrariness and racial skew -- do not argue in favor of abolition, because the world of homicide suffers from those same problems in an even more acute form, say the authors.

Capital punishment may be morally required not for retributive reasons, but in order to prevent the taking of innocent lives, conclude Sunstein and Vermeule.

Source: Cass R. Sunstein and Adrian Vermeule, "Is Capital Punishment Morally Required? The Relevance of Life-Life Tradeoffs," AEI-Brookings Joint Center for Regulatory Studies, March 2005.
http://www.ncpa.org/sub/dpd/index.php?Article_ID=1833

Beatings the norm for Bangladeshi children: UN

DHAKA : Nine out of 10 children in Bangladesh are physically beaten in school and seven out of 10 report similar experiences at home, according to a report released Thursday by the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF).

The report, which surveyed more than 3,800 children aged between nine and 18 across the impoverished country, found that the most common form of physical punishment in schools was with a cane or stick.

It found that 91 percent of those surveyed had been beaten in school, while 74 percent were physically punished at home.

Corporal punishment was used on 65 percent of working children, the report said.

"We wanted to know their experience and their views on corporal punishment," UNICEF representative in Bangladesh Carel de Rooy said.

"The findings show corporal punishment is widely used and accepted." Although the majority of children interviewed for the poll believed that corporal punishment was acceptable, it was a breach of children's rights under the international Convention of the Rights of the Child, he said.

"Violence used as a means of discipline can have devastating effects on the child and can never be justified," he said. Corporal punishment has been prohibited in Bangladeshi schools since 1995.

In 2005 a 12-year-old boy died after two beatings he received at school for not doing his homework and not paying attention in class.

The Controversial Punishment of the Death Penalty

In the day in day out creation and enforcement of laws by our government and law enforcement officials, it is a common occurrence for an issue to come up that is layered with emotional and moral questions. At the legislative level even today, our government is wrestling with issues involving cloning and stem cell research and trying to find a middle ground between the ethical, moral and religious issues versus the scientific benefit that might come from the practice.

One of the great debates has been ongoing in American society over it's history has been over whether it is moral and right to use the death penalty as a punishment for heinous crimes. Whether one is for abolishing this form of punishment or on the side of using it as a just outcome for a criminal, there is no question that the issue itself is a difficult one to decide.

The arguments for or against the death penalty are often not offered from a legal point of view. The positions taken by those both for and against the law fall under a few general classifications....

• The argument from morality against the death penalty. That it is immoral for a just society to take a life, even if it is of a criminal who themselves have taken life.

• The argument from morality for the death penalty. That it is just for the life of one convicted of a heinous crime to lose their lives as a proper outcome of that crime. That certain crimes should always be defined as so grievous that the one committing this crime must not continue to live and that it is the responsibility of the legal system to remove such individuals from society via the death penalty.

• The argument that the death penalty does or does not constitute cruel or unusual punishment.

• The argument that God calls for the death of the murderer under the “and eye for an eye" statute from the Hebrew Old Testament.

• The argument that God calls for the forgiveness of even the murderer as part of the theology of the Christian New Testament.

• The argument from economy that it costs less to execute a criminal than to keep him or her in prison for life.

• The argument that the most heinous criminal could be rehabilitated to become a productive member of society.

• The argument from revenge, that the family of victims of heinous crimes deserve to see the killers of their loved ones executed.

• The argument from closure that for those same families and for society, seeing the death of a heinous criminal aids in the grief process by providing closure when we see the guilty properly punished.

It is easy to see why this issue is so emotionally charged and continues to be one of debate and dialog both at the governmental level and in political and religious circles.

It really isn't rational to consider a law or the attempt by lawmakers to frame this issue into legislation as moral or immoral. In our representative form of government, those who would make laws have clear cut guidelines on how they will decide what will or will not become the law of the land.

The top level criteria for what becomes a law in this country is the will of the people. This can be difficult to determine especially in an issue that has fervent believers on both sides. The will of the people is not the sole criteria for a law as the electorate may not be aware of the legal grounds for a law or of the precedent in legal systems that were the background for our system of government. Again, reasons can be found in legal precedent that could be used to justify the legalization of the death penalty or the banning of it.

Finally law makers will turn to the consideration of the efficiency of a system of justice and in doing so try to determine if the death penalty is effective. There are almost as many studies to show that the death penalty does not reduce crime as show the opposite. It is similarly difficult to prove the executing criminals saves money compared to life in prison. But no matter what side of the issue we come down on, there is no question that this will be an ongoing debate in society for decades to come.

Capital punishment in Singapore - Public debate

Public debate in the Singaporean news media on the death penalty is almost non-existent, although the topic does occasionally get discussed in the midst of major, well-known criminal cases. Efforts to garner public opinion on the issue are rare, although it is generally assumed that most Singaporeans support it and believe it plays a part in keeping the crime rate in Singapore low.

Joshua Benjamin Jeyaretnam, the first ever opposition Member of Parliament in Singapore, was only given a few minutes to speak in parliament on the issue before his comments were rebutted by the Minister of State for Law and Home Affairs. Few other opposition members in parliament would bring up the issue, which may be reflective of a population generally indifferent to the matter.

The government states that the death penalty is only used in the most serious of crimes, sending, they say, a strong message to would-be offenders. They make no apology for their tough stance on law and order in the country. They point out that in 1994 and 1999 the United Nations General Assembly has failed to adopt resolutions calling for a moratorium on the death penalty worldwide, as a majority of countries opposed such a move.
The Permanent Representative of the Republic of Singapore to the United Nations wrote a letter to the Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions in 2001 which stated:
"…the death penalty is primarily a criminal justice issue, and therefore is a question for the sovereign jurisdiction of each country […] the right to life is not the only right, and […] it is the duty of societies and governments to decide how to balance competing rights against each other."

Before the hanging of Shanmugam Murugesu, a three-hour vigil was held on May 6, 2005. The organisers of the event at the Furama Hotel said it was the first such public gathering organised solely by members of the public against the death penalty in Singapore. Murugesu had been arrested after being caught in possession of six packets containing just over 1 kg of cannabis after returning from Malaysia. He admitted knowledge of one of the packets, which contained 300 g, but not the other five. The event went unreported on the partially state-owned media and the police shut down an open microphone session before the first person could speak.

After the hanging of Van Tuong Nguyen, a Vietnamese Australian man from Melbourne, Australia, on December 2, 2005, Sister Susan Chia the province leader of the Good Shepherd Sisters in Singapore took the opportunity to declare that "The death penalty is cruel, inhumane and it violates the right to life." Chia and several other nuns took it upon themselves to comfort Nguyen's mother two weeks before his execution for heroin trafficking. [1]

Singapore's death penalty laws have drawn comments in the media. For example, the science fiction author William Gibson, while a journalist, wrote a travel piece on Singapore in which he sarcastically referred to it as "Disneyland with the death penalty." [2]

Afghan Senate backs death penalty

Afghanistan's upper house of parliament has issued a statement backing a death sentence for a journalist for blasphemy in northern Afghanistan.

Pervez Kambakhsh, 23, was convicted last week of downloading and distributing an article insulting Islam. He has denied the charge.

The UN has criticised the sentence and said the journalist did not have legal representation during the case.

The Afghan government has said that the sentence was not final.

A government spokesman said recently that the case would be handled "very carefully".

Now the Afghan Senate has issued a statement on the case - it was not voted on but was signed by its leader, Sibghatullah Mojaddedi, an ally of President Hamid Karzai.

It said the upper house approved the death sentence conferred on Mr Kambaksh by a city court in Mazar-e-Sharif.

Concerns

It also strongly criticised what it called those institutions and foreign sources which, it said, had tried to pressurise the country's government and judiciary as they pursued people like Mr Kambakhsh.

Some governments and international organisations have called for the sentence to be overturned.

A legal expert, Wadir Safi, told the BBC that parliament was not constitutionally allowed to intervene in a case in the way the Senate had done, and he was concerned the new statement might prejudice the independence of the judges.

Mr Kambakhsh's brother, Yacoub Kambakhsh, told the BBC that the journalist was very concerned about his future and said he had not had a fair trial or any lawyer to defend him.

But the provincial governor in Mazar has said the case is being handled with due process.

Mr Kambakhsh has at least two more courts in which to appeal and the sentence would have to be approved by President Karzai to be carried out.

He is a student at Balkh University and a journalist for Jahan-e Naw (New World).

He was arrested in 2007 after downloading material relating to the role of women in Islamic societies.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/7216976.stm

Japan continues to execute mentally ill prisoners

10 September 2009

The government of Japan continues to execute prisoners who are mentally ill, according to a new Amnesty International report.

Hanging by a thread: mental health and the death penalty in Japan highlights five cases where mental illness has been reported, including two cases with extensive medical documentation. These prisoners remain on death row facing execution.

The exact number of death row prisoners with mental illness is unknown. The secrecy around the death penalty and prisoners' health, combined with a lack of scrutiny by independent mental health experts, has led to reliance on secondary testimony and documentation to assess the mental state of those on death row.

The government has a policy of not allowing access to prisoners on death row and denied Amnesty International’s request for access.

Amnesty International’s report also emphasises that prison conditions need to be improved to prevent inmates from developing serious mental health problems while on death row.

Japan has signed up to international standards that require that those with a serious mental illness be protected from the death penalty. The country is contravening those standards by its failure to prevent the execution of prisoners who are mentally ill.

As of 3 September 2009, 102 people are on death row in Japan waiting to find out if their government will put them to death. For those who have completed the legal process, death could come at a few hours' notice. Each day could be their last.

The arrival of a prison officer with a death warrant would signal their execution within hours. Some live like this year after year, sometimes for decades.

"To allow a prisoner to live for prolonged periods under the daily threat of imminent death is cruel, inhuman and degrading," said James Welsh, Amnesty International’s Health Coordinator and lead author of the report. "Amnesty International’s studies around the world have shown that those suffering mental health problems are at particular risk of ending up on death row.

"Mental disorders can give rise to crimes, impair the ability of a defendant to participate in an effective legal defence, and are likely to play a significant role in the decision of prisoners to terminate appeals. In Japan, condemned inmates are also at risk of developing a serious mental illness while on death row."

According to the report, Japan is breaching its obligations under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights in its treatment of prisoners on death row. Conditions in prisons are harsh and prisoners on death row are especially vulnerable to developing mental health problems due to being imprisoned in isolation with little human contact.

Amnesty International is concerned that prisoners are not allowed to talk to one another – a restriction enforced by strict isolation. Contact with family members, lawyers and others can be restricted to as little as five minutes at a time.

Apart from visits to the toilet, prisoners are not allowed to move around the cell and must remain seated. Death row prisoners are less likely than other prisoners to have access to fresh air and light and more likely to suffer additional punishments because of behaviour that may infringe the strict rules imposed on them.

"These inhuman conditions increase a prisoner’s anxiety and anguish and in many cases push prisoners over the edge and into a state of mental illness," said James Welsh.

The report calls on the government of Japan to establish a moratorium on executions with a view to abolishing the death penalty. It also urges the government of Japan to review all cases where mental illness may be a relevant factor, to ensure that prisoners with mental illness are not executed and to improve conditions for prisoners so that prisoners will not suffer declining mental health or the development of serious mental illness.

http://www.amnesty.org/en/news-and-updates/report/japan-continues-execute-mentally-ill-prisoners-20090910

Pros & cons for the Death Penalty

By Deborah White, About.com Guide

Arguments For

Arguments commonly made for supporting the death penalty are:

• To serve as example to other would-be criminals, to deter them from committing murder or terrorist acts
• To punish the criminal for his/her act.
• To obtain retribution on behalf of the victims.

Countries that Retain the Death Penalty As of 2008 per Amnesty International, 58 countries, representing about one-third of all countries worldwide, retain the death penalty for ordinary capital crimes, including the United States, plus:


Afghanistan, Antigua and Barbuda, Bahamas, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Barbados, Belarus, Belize, Botswana, Chad, China, Comoros, Democratic Republic of Congo, Cuba, Dominica, Egypt, Equatorial Guinea, Ethiopia, Guatemala, Guinea, Guyana, India, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Jamaica, Japan, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Lesotho, Libya, Malaysia, Mongolia, Nigeria, North Korea, Oman, Pakistan, Palestinian Authority, Qatar, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Saudi Arabia, Sierra Leone, Singapore, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Taiwan, Thailand, Trinidad And Tobago, Uganda, United Arab Emirates, United States Of America, Viet Nam, Yemen, Zimbabwe.

The United States is the only westernized democracy, and one of the few democracies worldwide, to not have abolished the death penalty.

Arguments Against

Arguments commonly made to abolish the death penalty are:

• Death constitutes "cruel and unusual punishment," which is prohibited by the 8th amendment to the US Constitution. Also, the various means used by the state to kill a criminal are cruel.
• The death penalty is used disproportionately against the poor, who cannot afford expensive legal counsel, as well as against racial, ethnic and religious minorities.
• The death penalty is applied arbitrarily and inconsistently.
• Wrongly convicted, innocent people have received death penalty sentences, and tragically, were killed by the state.
• A rehabilitated criminal can make a morally valuable contribution to society.
• Killing human life is morally wrong under all circumstances. Some faith groups, such as the Roman Catholic Church, oppose the death penalty as not being "pro-life."

Countries that Abolished the Death Penalty


As of 2008 per Amnesty International, 139 countries, representing two-thirds of all countries worldwide, have abolished the death penalty on moral grounds including:

Albania, Andorra, Angola, Argentina, Armenia, Australia, Austria, Azerbaijan, Belgium, Bhutan, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Burundi, Cambodia, Canada, Cape Verde, Colombia, Cook Islands, Costa Rica, Cote D'Ivoire, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Djibouti, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Estonia, Finland, France, Georgia, Germany, Greece, Guinea-Bissau, Haiti, Holy See, Honduras, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Kiribati, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Macedonia, Malta, Marshall Islands, Mauritius, Mexico, Micronesia, Moldova, Monaco, Montenegro, Mozambique, Namibia, Nepal, Netherlands, New Zealand, Nicaragua, Niue, Norway, Palau, Panama, Paraguay, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Rwanda, Samoa, San Marino, Sao Tome And Principe, Senegal, Serbia (including Kosovo), Seychelles, Slovakia, Slovenia, Solomon Islands, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Timor-Leste, Togo, Turkey, Turkmenistan, Tuvalu, Ukraine, United Kingdom, Uruguay, Uzbekistan, Vanuatu, Venezuela.

Where It Stands

In 2009, a growing chorus of leading voices spoke out about the immorality of the death penalty. The New York Times opined on June 1, 2009:

"There is no abuse of government power more egregious than executing an innocent man. But that is exactly what may happen if the United States Supreme Court fails to intervene on behalf of Troy Davis."

Troy Davis was an African-American sports coach who was convicted of the 1991 killing of a Georgia police officer. Several years later, seven of nine eyewitnesses who had linked Davis to the crime changed or entirely recanted their original testimony, claiming police coercion.

Mr,. Davis filed innumerable appeals for new evidence of innocence to be examined in Court, to little avail. His appeals were vociferously supported with more than 4,000 letters from the likes of Nobel Peace Prize recipients former President Jimmy Carter and Archbishop Desmond Tutu, and the Vatican.

On August 17, 2009, the U.S. Supreme Court ordered new hearings for Troy Davis. The first hearing is set for November 2009. Mr. Davis remains on Georgia's death row.

Exorbitant Cost on States of Capital Punishment

The New York Times also penned in its September 28, 2009 op-ed High Cost of Death Row:

"To the many excellent reasons to abolish the death penalty — it’s immoral, does not deter murder and affects minorities disproportionately — we can add one more. It’s an economic drain on governments with already badly depleted budgets.

"It is far from a national trend, but some legislators have begun to have second thoughts about the high cost of death row."

For instance, the Los Angeles Times reported in March 2009:

In California, legislators are wrestling with the cost of maintaining the nation's largest death row even though the state has executed only 13 inmates since 1976. Officials are also debating construction of a new $395-million death row prison that many lawmakers say the state cannot afford."

The New York Times reported in September 2009 about California:

"Perhaps the most extreme example is California, whose death row costs taxpayers $114 million a year beyond the cost of imprisoning convicts for life. The state has executed 13 people since 1976 for a total of about $250 million per execution."

Death-penalty ban bills based on costs were introduced in 2009, but failed to pass, in New Hampshire, Maryland, Montana, Maryland, Kansas, Nebraska, and Colorado. New Mexico passed death penalty ban legislation on March 18, 2009.

http://usliberals.about.com/od/deathpenalty/i/DeathPenalty_2.htm

Alternatives to death penatly: http://www.penalreform.org/resources/brf-01-2007-life-imprisonment-en.pdf

Afghanistan: Karzai Should Suspend Death Penalty

(New York, April 16, 2008) - Afghan President Hamid Karzai should suspend the death penalty and reject signing execution orders for about 100 prisoners whose death sentences were announced by the Supreme Court on April 16, Human Rights Watch said today.

Supreme Court officials told the media those sentenced to death had been convicted of serious crimes, such as kidnapping, hostage taking, armed robbery, murder, and rape. Legal experts and human rights organizations in Afghanistan have long expressed concerns that international due process and fair trial standards are generally not met in capital cases.

"The Supreme Court’s blanket confirmation of a hundred death sentences shows disturbing disregard for the right to life," said Elaine Pearson, Asia deputy director at Human Rights Watch. "The Afghan justice system still has a long way to go to respect the basic rights of the accused."

Under the Afghan criminal procedure code, death sentences handed down by local criminal courts are reviewed by an appeals court, and then, if the sentence stands, must be confirmed by the Supreme Court. Confirmed death sentences must then be endorsed by the Afghan president.

Legal experts in Afghanistan told Human Rights Watch that in a number of these criminal trials, the cases were not properly investigated and the courts did not disclose crucial evidence leading to convictions.

Previously, prisoners in Afghanistan have been executed with little or no warning. On October 7, 2007, the authorities executed by firing squad 15 prisoners who were on death row at Pule Charkhi prison. Neither the prisoners nor their relatives were informed in advance about the executions. All prisoners were on death row for crimes that had typically been commuted to prison sentences in the past.

Human Rights Watch urged President Hamid Karzai not to sign the execution orders, and instead to announce a moratorium on the death penalty.

"President Karzai should suspend the death penalty immediately," said Pearson. "More mass executions will be a huge setback for the rule of law in Afghanistan."

Human Rights Watch opposes the death penalty in all circumstances as an inherently cruel and unusual form of punishment and a violation of fundamental human rights.

http://www.unhcr.org/refworld/country,,HRW,,AFG,4562d8cf2,4809b9af1a,0.html

The Death Penalty is a Mistake

In the last twenty years at least forty-two men have been removed from death row after having been wrongly convicted.

Despite the fact that the same safeguards, the same legal procedures and criteria, are applied in each and every instance. In one case a brutal killer is sentenced to death; in another an innocent man is sent to the executioner.

Let me emphasize that: The same legal procedures, coupled with a jury's determination that the defendant is guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, are applied in each and every case. Yet they result in sending the innocent as well as the guilty to death row.

• It took thirteen years to prove that Freddie Lee Gains was not guilty of murder. Thirteen years before an innocent man was freed. Keep that in mind the next time you hear someone demand that we shorten the appeals' process.
Years after his trial, conviction and death sentence in Birmingham, Alabama, one of the actual perpetrators, who was arrested for another crime in Florida, confessed. Gains, who had insisted all along that he was innocent, would be dead now if the advocates of shorting the appeals' process had had their way.

• In the summer of 1984 a nine year old girl was tortured, sodomized, and murdered near her home in Baltimore County, Maryland. Based only on circumstantial evidence, twenty-three year old Kurt Bloodsworth was convicted and sentenced to death. Bloodsworth spent two years on death row awaiting execution before an appeal on a technicality resulted in a new trial. Once again he was convicted. This time, however, he received a life sentence. That sentence was literally a life-saver for Bloodsworth. Nine years after his first trial, conviction, and death sentence, DNA analysis of the child's garments proved that he could not possibly have been the man they were after. The wrong man had been sentenced to death.

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Unknown to Bloodsworth, three days after his 1st conviction police and prosecutors learned about David Rehill. Hours after the girl's murder Rehill showed up at a mental health clinic with fresh scratches on his face and told one of the therapists that he was "in trouble with a little girl".
Rehill resembled the police composite, and not unsurprisingly looked remarkably like Bloodsworth. But then Bloodsworth was already behind bars. Six months passed before the lead was investigated. While Rehill was eventually interviewed, police records indicate that his alibi was never checked. Nor was he ever placed in a lineup.

Despite the fact that the state had known about Rehill for two years prior to Bloodsworth's second trial, that information was withheld from the defense until just days before the second trial. (His attorneys did not have time to investigate and failed to ask for a postponement. The second jury never learned that there was another potential suspect.)
CBS correspondent Edie Magnus covered the Bloodsworth case for a segment of "Eye To Eye" which was broadcast on October 28th, 1993. Asked to respond "to the criticism that the system closed in on one guy with some evidence, and that everybody just stooped looking at other things that didn't fit", lead prosecutor Robert Lazzero stated:
"I would say that unfortunately that is not all that rare of an occurrence in our criminal justice system. " Magnus added that the Bloodsworth case demonstrated that "it is eerily easy with a weak case to convict an innocent man. " "Yes," said Lazzero thoughtfully, "in retrospect it is."
• You might want to talk to Matthew Conner who was convicted of the rape, murder and brutal mutilation of a twelve-year old girl. Conner spent twelve and a half years in prison for a crime he didn't commit. Eventually, boxes of concealed evidence were discovered in the possession of the District Attorney - evidence which, had it not been denied to his lawyer at the time of his trial, would have established that he was not guilty.
• For 13 years Fred Zain was employed as a medical examiner and forensic expert by the West Virginia State Police. In 1989 he moved to San Antonio, Texas where he served for the next 3 years as its crime laboratory's chief serologist. Over the years Zain was involved in thousands of criminal cases. His expert testimony was responsible for sending hundreds of defendants to prison. There's only one problem.

According to a report prepared for the West Virginia Supreme Court by the American Society of Crime Laboratory Directors and released by the court in November 1993, Fred Zain "fabricated or falsified evidence in just about every case he touched." And that included at least 133 murder and rape cases. His actions, stated the report, were the "result of systematic practice rather than an occasional inadvertent error."

As a result of that report the court ruled that, "Any testimony or documentary evidence offered by Zain, at any time, in any criminal prosecution, should be deemed invalid, unreliable and inadmissible." But by then Fred Zain had moved on to a new state, Texas, and a new job, chief serologist for San Antonio.

In 1989 Jack Davis was arrested for the sexual assault, murder and mutilation of Kathie Balonis, a New Braunfels, Texas woman. At the time Davis had been employed as a maintenance man at the victim's apartment complex. During Davis' trial, Fred Zain testified that blood specimens found under the victim's body belonged to Davis who'd cut his hand prior to the murder.
Zain's testimony was extremely influential as there were no witnesses to the crime. Davis was convicted of murder and his jury came within a single vote of sentencing him to death. Fortunately for Davis, he was sentenced to life in prison. For in 1992 a hearing was convened to investigate prosecutorial misconduct in the Davis case.

According to Davis' defense attorney, Stanley Schneider, Zain had originally testified that "his testing had proven that blood found under the woman's body came from Davis. Now it comes out that he [Zain] never did the testing. So Davis was convicted on Zain's lies." Indeed, in a deposition taped about a year after the trial Zain reversed himself and stated that the blood samples in question actually belonged to the victim and not to Davis.

When subsequently questioned under oath about his conflicting statements, Zain refused to answer and invoked his 5th Amendment protection against self-incrimination. Judge Charles Ramsey was outraged and said that Zain's conduct was "intentional and outrageous" adding that it "shocked the conscience of the court." Today, after serving 4 years of his life sentence, Jack Davis is a free man.

Zain was dismissed from his Texas job in June of 1993 when evidence vital to the prosecution of a San Antonio murder case suddenly went missing. Subsequently, Bexar County Medical Examiner Vincent DiMaio hired Irving Stone of the Institute of Forensic Science in Dallas to conduct an extensive review of Zain's work during his period of employment with San Antonio. Stone and his team of specialists conducted an in-depth examination of at least 180 cases in which Zain had been involved. Quoting from an article in the San Francisco Examiner, Stone's team discovered "reports from tests that were never done, negative results that would have cleared a suspect reported as positive and inconclusive results described as conclusive".
Said Stone: "Everything that Fred Zain did, whether it was in West Virginia or Texas, has to be suspect, and it worries me to the point that (the tests) ought to be repeated." Estimates of the total number of cases in which Zain was involved vary from 1,200 to 4,500 (the latter is Stone's).
• You might want to talk to Clarence Brandley who was sentenced to death on the basis of deliberately suppressed evidence. He received his first stay 5 days from his scheduled execution. His second stay was granted 13 days from his final walk. Brandley was wrongly convicted in 1980 and spent 9 1/2 years in while appealing his conviction.

• And then there's the case of Randall Dale Adams. Adams was found guilty beyond a reasonable doubt of killing a police officer. Sentenced to death, his appeals were rejected. Just seventy-two hours from execution, by a stroke of good fortune, it was established that the wrong man was about to be put to death.
• Recently, a defense attorney I know was defending a man of a capital crime. During the trial he discovered, and was able to establish under cross examination, that the police officer testifying under oath against his client had falsified the evidence.
• Finally, there are the two California black men who recently received a public apology from the judge when they were released. In an unusual move the Los Angeles DA joined with their defense attorney in the motion for their release; the Los Angeles District Attorney publicly stated that the two men had not received a fair trial and were wrongfully convicted. Benny Powell and Clarence Chance spent 17 years in prison for the murder of a Sheriff's Deputy - a murder which they never committed. It took 17 years to release two innocent men.
Yet there are all too many who want to shorten the appeals process. It must be stressed that these men were subjected to the exact same procedure as the Bundys. They too were found guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. But they were innocent.
They are not someone's hypotheticals; they are real flesh and blood human beings who were wrongly convicted and sentenced to death. And least I be misunderstood, let me make it clear that I have no compassion whatsoever for the brutal killers. It is myself, my family, and my friends who concern me - as they should you.

The same procedures which produced a verdict of guilty beyond a reasonable doubt convicted two men: Bundy and Adams. Yet one of them was innocent. Since there is no way to ensure that the procedure itself will not err or be abused, since there is no way to give a man back his life should you discover that a horrible mistake was made, and since there is another alternative, we must discard the death penalty.

We must abandon the death penalty because of the potential for error and abuse which is, of necessity, inherent in the system. As the stories of the men above make all to clear, this is not some vague hypothetical theory. It is all too frighteningly real. Shorten the appeals' process, and many of those innocent men mentioned above would long since have been executed. We must repeal the death penalty and substitute life without parole for our own protection; protection from abuse of the system and for our own safety's sake. Not from some long-past abuse, but from abuse or error which occurs today and will occur tomorrow so long as human beings administer a criminal justice system.

It is to protect each and every one of us from racial prejudice, or ambitious prosecutors who have forgotten why they are there, or incompetent defense attorneys, or innocent error that we must prohibit the one penalty which can not be reversed should we subsequently discover our mistake.

We must never forget that prosecutors, judges, expert witnesses and jurors are no more immune to prejudice, blind ambition, or error than the rest of us. For the 'convenient' thing about the death penalty is that it allows the state to bury its mistakes leaving the guilty to walk free. And it is unlikely that anyone is going to investigate a case once an innocent man has been executed. If we truly believe in Justice we must abolish the death penalty.

Curry killer loses death penalty appeal

Japanese court's ruling ends 10-year legal battle
SHE served her neighbours arsenic-laced curry because she was angry with the other housewives in the neighbourhood.

23 April 2009

SHE served her neighbours arsenic-laced curry because she was angry with the other housewives in the neighbourhood.

Her deadly concoction left four neighbours dead and many others seriously ill.
And after more than a decade of trials and appeal, Japan's highest court decided to uphold an earlier death sentence ruling on Masumi Hayashi.

The ruling ends one of Japan's longest and highest-profile cases.
Hayashi was arrested in October 1998, but has maintained her innocence throughout.
In 2002, a district court convicted Hayashi, 47, of deliberately lacing a pot of curry with arsenic and serving it to neighbours at a summer festival in July 1998 in Wakayama city, about 450 kilometres southwest of Tokyo.

Four people, including two children, died and 63 others fell ill after eating the curry.
The incident unnerved the nation at the time, and led to dozens of copycat crimes across Japan for several months. In one case, a man died after drinking canned tea laced with cyanide.
The courts never clarified a possible motive, although prosecutors have said she was angry with housewives in the neighbourhood.

She was also convicted without direct evidence linking her to the poisonings.
Prosecutors linked her to the crime by presenting various pieces of circumstantial evidence.
Arsenic identical in components to that laced into the curry was found in the defendant's home, and high levels of arsenic were detected in Hayashi's hair, leading the court to believe that she possessed such chemicals.

Acting suspiciously
The court also noted that Hayashi was the only person who had a chance to lace the curry with arsenic, and that she was spotted acting suspiciously at the scene, such as opening the cover of the pot containing the curry.

'The defendant's criminal responsibility is extremely serious ...the court has no choice but to approve the death sentence by the district court,' Kyodo News agency said, quoting the ruling.
According to The Manichi Times, Presiding Justice Kohei Nasu had also said: 'The incident had a huge impact on the regional community and the general public. She also committed attempted murder and other crimes in connection with insurance fraud, and has a strong tendency to commit crimes.

'The four victims were suddenly deprived of their lives during a summer festival they should have enjoyed, even though they were not at fault. It is only natural that their bereaved families are urging that the defendant be punished severely,' the presiding judge said.
Judge Nasu also noted that Hayashi has neither regretted her crime nor compensated her victims.

Hayashi's lawyers plan to file a petition for a retrial, Kyodo said.
Arsenic, which occurs naturally in soil and water, is poisonous in large amounts and has been used to kill insects and rats.

Japan reinstated capital punishment in 1993 after a four-year moratorium, and executes prisoners on death row by hanging.

Should Christians support the death penalty

By ROLAND CHIA

CAPITAL punishment is a divisive issue today, even among Christians. Fundamentalist Christians in America, especially from the so-called Bible-belt, support the death penalty because it is the explicit teaching of Scripture, particularly the Old Testament.

Conservative Catholics support the death penalty maintaining that the practice - which is the right of the State - is in concurrence with Scripture, tradition and natural law. Liberals (and some conservatives) have long called for its total abolition.It is impossible within the limited compass of this essay to examine this complex issue from every angle. What follows is a brief survey of the biblical material and the witness of the Christian tradition.

I will also discuss, albeit briefly, the arguments in support of and against capital punishment, before presenting my own position. There can be no doubt that the Old Testament sanctions capital punishment for certain crimes and offences. In the Mosaic Law there are no less than 36 capital offences that are punishable by execution by stoning, burning, decapitation or strangulation. The list includes offences such as idolatry, magic, blasphemy, murder, adultery, bestiality, incest, and even the violation of the Sabbath. But the death penalty is seen as an especially appropriate punishment for murder, for the Noahic covenant presents the following principle: "Whoever shed the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed, for God made man in his own image." (Genesis 9:6).

That capital punishment is an approved punishment that the State can execute is surely taught, or at least implied, in Romans 13. The authority of the State is established by God to reward the good and punish the wicked. The State has the right to wield the sword in dealing with the wicked. Although Jesus Himself refrains from using violence, He does not deny that the State has the authority to exact capital punishment. He cites with approval the harsh commandment, "He who speaks evil of father or mother, let him surely die", in His debate with the Pharisees (Matthew 15:4; Mark 7:10, Cf. Exodus 21:17; Leviticus 20:9). In His trial before Pilate, Jesus did not contest Pilate's right to execute offenders but reminded him that this authority came "from above". (John 19:11).Support for the death penalty is almost unanimous in the Christian tradition, particularly in the teachings of the Fathers and Doctors of the Church.

Except for a few like Ambrose, most Church Fathers maintain that Scripture gives the State the right to exact such punishment on certain offenders. Thoughtful objectors of the death penalty have offered four reasons why capital punishment should be abolished. The first is that the convict may be innocent. This objection alerts us to the fact that even the best and most objective justice system is imperfect and therefore not infallible. The second objection is that the death penalty whets the appetite for revenge. The third objection is that the death punishment cheapens the value of life and promotes the idea that murder in some respects may be condoned. Some see this as a weak objection: many pro-life advocates are at the same time advocates of capital punishment because they reasoned rightly that the innocent and the guilty do not have the same rights.The final objection will at first glance appear to be compelling: Christians are called to forgive. Although forgiveness is an important aspect of the Gospel and the Christian is commanded to forgive, there must be a distinction between the assailant's relationship with his victim and with the state. Personal pardon on the part of the victim does not absolve the offender from his/her obligation to justice.

The purposes of criminal punishment may be summarised thus: rehabilitation, defence against the criminal, deterrence and retribution. Can the death penalty achieve these goals?Rehabilitation: Obviously the death penalty does not help to reintegrate the criminal into society - although from the pastoral standpoint it may cause repentance and reconciliation with God. Defence against the criminal: Capital punishment is obviously an effective way of protecting society from the criminal, although some questioned if such an extreme measure is really necessary. Deterrence: The death penalty may deter others contemplating to commit similar crimes, although its power to do so is debatable.

Finally, retribution: The general principle is that guilt calls for punishment; and the greater the offence, the more severe the punishment. But since the State, unlike God, is neither omniscient nor omnipotent, retribution by the State obviously has its limits. I believe that the State has the authority to exact the death penalty although it may choose not to do so. The State may choose to commute the death sentence to a less severe punishment, like life imprisonment without parole. However, should the State choose to put criminals to death, such punishment should be meted out only to perpetrators of heinous crimes like murder. The State has the authority to wield the sword, but it must do so sparingly, and always in the interest of justice.

Dr Roland Chia is Dean of Postgraduate Studies and Lecturer in Historical and Systematic Theology at Trinity Theological College. He worships at the Fairfield Preaching Point in Woodlands.

Death Penalty & Poverty in Singapore

According to the IPS Death Penalty Abolition Project, there is a direct relationship between poverty and the death penalty based on a worldwide survey of experts and human rights activists carried out by journalists. The news report stated that most of those on death row, whether in rich or poor countries, are likely to be the poor and the under-privileged.

In the U.S. for example, 95% of the 3,350 people on death row are poor, according to Bryan Stevenson, executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative in Alabama. In Malaysia, human rights lawyer, Charles Hector, estimated that nearly 90 percent of the 300 people on death row are poor. The report also listed other examples including Pakistan, China, Japan, Saudi Arabia and Nigeria quoting from local anti-death penalty activists who corroborated the validity of the relationship between poverty and capital punishment.

In Singapore, the statistics are equally grim. According to Singapore based human rights group, Think Centre (based on a paper handout for its Human Rights Day 2005 Forum), a breakdown of profiles of those executed in 1999 to 2003 revealed that 51% of those executed in Singapore were unemployed or working as unskilled workers, labourers or cleaners. 64% were either not educated or achieved only primary school level. These are people who are likely to be poor or at the bottom rung of the economic ladder.

While the Singapore government is cautious and secretive in releasing updated information pertaining to capital punishment cases due to increased international scrutiny and condemnation, it is not presumptuous to conclude that those on death row in Singapore, like their overseas counterparts, are likely to be poor too.

The Penalty of Death

I have wanted to write about this for a long time; and in view of the quote at the top of this blog one must wonder why it has taken that long.

The death penalty was a talking point not too long ago; most recent being the instance where Tochi was hanged. This led to a big debate in the blogosphere whereby several issues became so interwined that it became confusing after awhile, akin to the Wars of Roses. In that situation, Tochi was hanged because he had been convicted of drug trafficking and under the law that got him a mandatory date with Darshan Singh.

Now check the line above this page:
If you would take a man’s life, you owe it to him to look him into his eyes and hear his final words. And if you cannot bear to do that, then perhaps the man does not deserve to die.”
The above, in a way, sums up Ned’s views on this issue of the death penalty (No I do not advocate that the Judges become the ones to pull the trap door). The death penalty serves a purely retributive purpose (though you can also say it serves to prevent the criminal from committing his crime again; he can’t do it if he is dead) and thus should be reserved for the most serious offences such as murder. Therefore with regards to drug trafficking alone, it appears rather excessive but if you believe that drug traffickers destroy life and thus should also be treated akin to murderers then your point is acknowledged. However as the aforesaid quote suggests, executing another human being should never become an easy task or be expedited in anyway.

Therefore the revalations behind the Statute under which Tochi, Nguyen and others were convicted do give rise to cause of concern. The fact that there is a presumption that you know what you are carrying and therefore are drug trafficking is rather worrying. Those who have watched The Practice and some other legal dramas would have heard of the mantra “innocent until proven guilty”. However the presumption clause goes against this and essentially makes one guilty until proven innocent. The Burden of Proof, which in a criminal case should lie with the Prosecutor, is now on the Defendant. Before anyone starts decrying Ned to be a weepy hearted liberal, I must state that this post merely states my views on the death penalty; this post is not an attempt to find fault with the trials of those executed. Anyway back to the Act, since the Act prescribes a mandatory sentence of death on those convicted of it, and since we are dealing with human beings, it is only fair that most doubts are resolved before conviction; namely, the case against the person be proven beyond reasonable doubt. This acts as a safeguard in the event that a situation not dissimilar to that of Bridget Jones in Bridget Jones Diary 2 occurs. What if someone slips 2g of heroin into a person’s bag by mistake and the person crosses the check point and is nabbed? Bear in mind that under the current Act he will be presumed to have been drug trafficking!

Furthermore, I do not think that the Prosecutors in Singapore are buay kan such that they will be unable to prove a drug trafficker guilty without the presumptions kicking in. I also do not think that the Singapore Judiciary cannot distinguish between a person who is guilty and a person who is at the wrong place at the wrong time. Thus it is only fair that this presumptions be removed so as to act as a safeguard against a miscarriage of justice. The Law should not do the job for the prosecution in anyway.

Apparently there are also other issues in criminal law, with regards to burden of proof and defendants rights. Unfortunately I do not know many criminal lawyers, and so no comment will be forthcoming at this time. What I do know is that death, is absolute and irrevocable, and thus if a sentence of death is passed, in no way must the process be expedited.

The death Penalty in China

Tuesday, Aug 19, 2008

With the commencement of the 2008 Beijing Olympics, the international spotlight has been trained on China, for its athletic prowess and much more. Not surprisingly, I found myself at a seminar on “China’s Death Penalty: Laws and Practices” conducted by Dr. Lu Hong, which culminated in an examination of the future prospects of the death penalty in China.

Whether this is a consequence of China opening up to international attention or a reaction to China’s unprecedented and spectacular hosting of the Summer Olympics, the fact of the matter is that China is undergoing reform as she continues to play a greater role in the world stage. From her ratification of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights in 2001, and a pending ratification of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, to increased civic awareness through movements such as the peaceful protest against the construction of a petrochemical factory and oil refinery in Chengdu, there are many indicators of China’s development.

Tasteful or not, as one member of the audience was kind enough to sound out, the issue of killing, more commonly referred to as the death penalty, also falls under review in the bracket of progress. (One might have to hope though, that this is not too inauspicious a period to bring this topic up since this coincides with the seventh month in the lunar calendar, the month of the Hungry Ghosts, where spirits are said to be aplenty. )

China has consistently been ranked among the top 5 or 6 countries in the world contributing to the majority of executions in a year, according to Amnesty International, a worldwide human rights body. These deaths account for a wide range of capital offences, including economic crimes such as corruption and crimes against symbols and treasures of state, such as theft of cultural relics and killing of pandas, which have been criticised as “arbitrary”i . It is no wonder that there have been increasing calls for the death penalty to be abolished, or restricted to more severe crimes of violent character. At a conference organized by the law institute of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and the Danish Institute of Human Rights in January 2003 with both Chinese foreign scholars and foreign specialists taking part, not only did legal experts push strongly for the need to limit the use of capital punishment, but also argued for abolition as the ‘mark of a “civilized society”
’ ii.
China is also realizing the increasing need to allay international criticism of its human rights record to better manage foreign relations as it continues to extend its reach of influence. Dr. Liu Renwen, a researcher with the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, has identified China's death penalty as being an obstacle to international and regional criminal judicial administration and cooperation, as the European Commission and some countries which have abolished the death penalty forbid the extradition of criminals to their home countries if they would face the death penalty there.

Yet, with the current reliance on capital punishment, is China ready for the abolishment of the death penalty, or would China do better to first take steps to reduce the use of death sentencing?
Most proponents of the death penalty cite the importance of capital punishment as a deterrent. While there are no known studies on the deterrent effect of the death penalty, a number of public surveys have shown that 60-80% of the Chinese are in favour of the death penalty. Officials have come to cite public opinion in support of the reformist movement. This also comes in defense of China’s notorious “strike-hard”（严打） campaigns which aim to warn the public against committing certain crimes whereby the courts adopt an “act fast, act hard”（从中从快） stance against a particular crime and hands down punishment more severely and quickly, as it reflects a certain amount of confidence in the death penalty to help deter crimes.
In addition, China has had a long history of taking punitive measures to enforce law and order, resulting in a societal mindset that might take another few decades to overturn. These have long been targets of criticism by the abolitionist camp, which emphasise human rights and humanist values, and there are signs that China is more than willing to undo the hive of negative opinion, if not for her own civilization.

China has been developing its death penalty policies, building on the policy of “kill less, kill cautiously” (少杀慎杀), present since 1949, to the current one to “preserve the death penalty, but use it cautiously”（不可不杀，不可滥杀，不可误杀）. While affirming the latest policy, China’s chief justice Xiao Yang also reiterated the need to “continue to follow the policy of being both strict and lenient according to the actual situation of the cases, and show leniency to the convicts who only committed minor offenses or merited milder punishment and even exemption of punishment”
iii.
This came along with the announcement that the Supreme Court had taken back the authority to review and approve death sentences from the local courts in 2006, in a bid to clean up the country’s embarrassing record of executions, and enforce a greater level of fairness and consistency. Other evidence of a concerted effort to improve the system include an overwhelming number of cases coming under review, forcing the supreme courts to increase its employment of judges in the criminal division by six fold.
China’s chief justice also pinpointed a possible step in alternative to doing away with the death penalty in China’s existing laws, namely the decision on whether death penalty will no longer be applicable to certain kinds of crimes. Out of the 68 capital offences, a third is rarely used, and another third involve non-violent crimes.

This would lead to other areas of consideration of greater “material civilisation”, or greater social productivity, so that the country will be able to sustain long term imprisonment should the death penalty be gradually abolished for more and more crimes.

However, this remains an uncertain vision as China’s judicial system would have to tackle an array of issues within the system. From removing outdated conventions such as having overseas connection as a mitigating condition for offenders and a heavy reliance on confessions as the primary means of conviction, to engaging in greater use of ‘objective data’ through science and technology, such as the use of DNA tests, the Chinese can work towards reducing the number of miscarriages of justice.

Additionally, China’s officials and academia could afford to provide a more comprehensive picture of the crime distribution in the country by releasing and compiling more data for more reforms to be proposed. Experts have suggested that this might come about following the reforms to reduce the number of death sentences as China might be less embarrassed to reveal its records. On the other hand, with there being only two countries in the world, namely the United States and Japan, to release such data, China might not feel the need to place itself under such scrutiny. What is crucial though, is that the legal records and procedures in the country be consolidated. Allowing disclosure of trial information and opening trials to the public could be a step towards more systematic processing and recording even if the latest reform of giving the supreme courts final authority makes it hard to coordinate data.

Despite the positive steps that China has taken in its reform process, there are still more problems that the legal sector in China need to tackle hands-on, such as ensuring greater consistency in its court sentencing and eliminating outdated practices before the discussion on the abolitionist movement can proceed.

At the same time, while focusing on making reforms within the legal system with regard to the death penalty, China can also take small steps towards reducing the need for death sentencing. With Confucianism being ‘rediscovered’iv in China, there is hope that Chinese society might shift away from using the law as a methodical standard for behaviour in society towards individual development an attainment of greater “spiritual civilization”.

Notably, even as the debate over the death penalty falls under a single jurisdiction of reforms taking place in China, there will no doubt be an impact on her continued growth, as well as her national and international security.

i.Grayling, A.C. “Why China should not get the 2008 Olympics”,http://www.acgrayling.com/china.html
ii.The Guardian,2003, “China questions death penalty”,http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2003/jan/15/china.johngittings
iii.Xinhua, China Daily, 2006, “China’s policy is to preserve death penalty”,http://chinadaily.cn/english/doc/2006-03/12/content_533247.htm
iv.IHT, 2006, “China’s leaders rediscover Confucianism”,http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/09/14/opinion/edbell.php
Author: Yu Shan
About the author:
Tay Yu Shan is an undergraduate at King's College London and an intern at the Singapore Institue of International Affairs.

Why Japan Still Has the Death Penalty?

Why Japan Still Has the Death Penalty
By Charles LaneSunday, January 16, 2005; Page B01

There is a place in the advanced industrial world where people are regularly sentenced to death, and executed, for their crimes. Some of the condemned deny their guilt -- and there are confirmed cases of mistakes in sentencing. But government officials say the system delivers retribution and deterrence fairly and efficiently.

This place is not Texas. It is Japan -- the only industrial democracy other than our own that still regularly executes convicted murderers. In 2004, the Japanese conducted two executions by hanging, the sole method employed there. In some years, the rate is double or triple that. This is nowhere near the rate in the United States, where 59 convicted murderers were put to death in 2004. But there are many more murders in the United States than in Japan, and our population is 295 million people compared to Japan's 127 million. When you adjust for those facts, Japan has recently been about as likely as Texas and Virginia to sentence killers to death.

Covering the Supreme Court, which has the final say in every capital case, I have gotten used to seeing the United States as a loner on this issue. The European Union, Canada, South Africa and a growing portion of Latin America have abolished the death penalty. The United States regularly absorbs condemnation from human rights organizations because it hasn't. But the United States is joined in continuing the practice by an officially pacifist country that many Americans think of as the cradle of Pikachu and Hello Kitty. How come? My best guess, based on reporting I did there this past summer: Basically, Japan's leaders are giving their people what they want.

To be sure, democracy in Japan is not usually thought of as highly responsive. Since World War II, Japan's government has been dominated by a single party, the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), which is closely allied with unelected bureaucrats who make policy behind the scenes. The government forbids the release of basic information about the death penalty, so public opinion is poorly informed. Executions are conducted in secret; as former justice minister Hideo Usui told me, they are scheduled during parliamentary recesses, so as to deprive opposition politicians of any opportunity "to cause a big public row over the death penalty."

Still, not even capital punishment's opponents in Japan question the basic validity of a survey conducted by the government in 1999, which found that 79.3 percent of the public backs the death penalty. In 34 polls taken between 1953 and 1999, abolition of capital punishment has never garnered a majority. Letters published in the Japanese press reflect the surprisingly intense feelings behind the polls. "I believe execution is the best punishment for felons, especially murderers," a citizen named Hajime Ishi wrote to the Yomiuri Shimbun in July 2003. "Controversial as my opinion may be, I would like to see all murderers -- regardless of their age, gender and nationality -- put to death." In a 2003 trial, a Tokyo prosecutor made his case for a death sentence by handing the judge a petition signed by 76,000 people.

Japanese frequently invoke culture to account for these sentiments. One theory, of which I heard several variants, is that the Japanese, group-oriented and with ancestral roots in village life, have a long tradition of isolating and eliminating evildoers. Authoritarian tenets of Confucianism, a Chinese import, may have reinforced this. Several people told me that Japanese Buddhism, too, provides support for capital punishment. "A basic teaching is retribution," says Tomoko Sasaki, a former member of the Diet (Japan's parliament), an ex-prosecutor and a leading advocate of the death penalty in the LDP. "If someone evil does something bad, he has to atone with his own life. If you take a life, you have to give your own."

But cultural norms, though powerful, are not immutable; capital punishment has ebbed and flowed in Japan, both historically and in modern times. Buddhism, famously a nonjudgmental, nonviolent doctrine, can easily be interpreted as incompatible with the death penalty. And a ban on capital punishment prevailed in Japan during the Heian Era (794 A.D. to 1185 A.D.), which coincided with Buddhism's introduction to the country from China. One of the country's most prominent anti-capital punishment activists since the war, the late Tairyu Furukawa, was a Buddhist priest. During the early '90s, Megumu Sato, a former Buddhist priest serving as minister of justice, refused to sign execution orders for the year he was in office, citing his religious beliefs.
Sato was one of four ministers who served during a 40-month de facto moratorium on executions that began in November 1989 and ended in March 1993. The moratorium followed a period of increasing concern about capital punishment, both inside and outside the Japanese government. The key events were the exonerations during the 1980s of four death-row prisoners, all of whom had been sentenced to hang in the chaotic period just after World War II and then spent years pursuing appeals.

The exonerations were deeply embarrassing to the powerful Ministry of Justice, which handles all criminal prosecutions in Japan. Ministry officials sincerely believe that such miscarriages of justice are all but impossible under the Japanese system, because prosecutors rarely bring charges unless the defendant confesses and only seek the death penalty in selected cases involving multiple victims, or where murder is combined with rape or robbery. But the exonerations forced the country to acknowledge that several men had been sentenced to death based on confessions squeezed out of them in prolonged custody, that the police had mishandled key evidence -- and that such practices have not disappeared. Amid the soul-searching, the anti-death penalty movement, traditionally marginal, gained strength and coalesced into an umbrella organization known as Forum 90, the first of its kind in modern Japan.

Yet, just as death-row exonerations based on DNA evidence have dented but not overturned the basic consensus in favor of the death penalty in the United States, the pro-death penalty consensus in Japan proved resilient. In time, concerns about crime and violence came to trump concerns about the rights of defendants. After an internal review of the exonerations, which concluded mainly that authorities needed to do a better job of ensuring truthful confessions, the Ministry of Justice resumed executions in March 1993.
Then, on March 20, 1995, a cult known as Aum Shinrikyo released nerve gas in the Tokyo subway, killing 12 people and injuring thousands. Citizens demanded that the perpetrators pay with their lives, and the authorities responded. "Politicians listen to voters' views," Yuji Ogawara, a lawyer who represents capital defendants, told me. "In that sense, it has become more difficult to talk about abolishing the death penalty since Aum. It was a watershed event." Of the 50 death sentences issued between 1999 and 2002, nine went to Aum conspirators. The cult's founder, Shoko Asahara, was sentenced to death last year.

Something else happened in the mid-1990s: street crime rose. Japan is still much safer than America. But what Japanese notice is that it is less safe than it used to be. According to the government, reported crimes registered a postwar high for six consecutive years between 1996 and 2002 before leveling off in 2003. Causes include Japan's steep and socially disruptive economic downturn in the '90s, as well as post-Cold War freedom of movement among Japan, Russia and China, which brought some foreign gang activity to Japan's shores. While the number of murders hasn't risen rapidly, several brutal and highly publicized killings -- including a massacre of eight schoolchildren in 2001 -- fed the public's growing sense of insecurity.

Whereas 1990 saw the founding of Forum 90, 1999 marked the founding of the National Association of Crime Victims and Surviving Families, an influential pro-death penalty lobby. Its founder, Isao Okamura, is a lawyer and former vice chairman of the Japan Federation of Bar Associations, which advocates a moratorium on executions and greater legal protections for death row inmates. But after Okamura's wife was brutally stabbed to death in 1997, his views hardened.

The courts, which had led the way in re-examining capital punishment two decades earlier, now were following the public mood. On Dec. 10, 1999, Japan's Supreme Court overturned the life sentence imposed on a man convicted of robbery and murder in Hiroshima prefecture. It was the first time since 1983 that the Supreme Court had recommended that a life sentence be replaced with death. This decision had a "great influence" on trial judges, says Satoru Shinomiya, a law professor at Waseda University in Tokyo. It has been followed by several other rulings in which appeals courts have granted prosecution requests to overturn life sentences in favor of the death penalty. (Such requests are not allowed in the United States.)

Judges sentenced one person to death in 1992 (there are no jury trials in Japan); they sentenced 18 people to death in 2002. There are currently 60 people on death row whose sentences have been finalized (as of Sept. 15, 2004), an increase of 10 from 1999 and more than double the level, 24, of 1986. Meanwhile, a bill calling for a three-year moratorium on executions and a top-to-bottom review of the capital punishment system was shelved last year by its sponsors in the Diet, because of its poor prospects for success.
To expect Japan to abolish the death penalty through normal democratic processes is to expect it to do something that Europe itself did not exactly accomplish. Germany and Italy got rid of the death penalty immediately after World War II, when the drafters of their new constitutions banned it. (Japan's 1946 constitution, promulgated under U.S. occupying authorities who were also hanging Japanese war criminals, bans "cruel" punishments; in 1948, the Japanese Supreme Court ruled that the death penalty was not cruel.) In France, then-president Francois Mitterrand abolished the death penalty by decree in 1981; most French citizens supported it, but Mitterrand imposed his will thanks to the power of the French presidency, which has no equivalent in consensus-oriented Japan. Even now, large percentages in most European nations favor the death penalty, according to polls. More countries continue to abolish it to meet a condition of inclusion in the European Union. Poland, for example, abolished the death penalty in 1997, despite surveys showing that more than 60 percent of Poles wanted to keep it.

But opponents of the death penalty in Japan, international and domestic, have no such leverage. Europe is not about to slap economic sanctions on the world's second-largest economy. The strongest punishment threatened so far is revocation of Japan's observer status on the Council of Europe, a human rights organization made up of representatives from 44 governments -- and the council has hesitated to impose even that. For Japanese officials, resistance to foreign critics of the death penalty may be a relatively cost-free way to savor a little old-fashioned national sovereignty. "We believe that the decision whether to keep or abolish the death penalty should be the decision of each individual country, and should be based on the public sentiment of each country, and the crime situation in each country," says Hideo Takasaki, a senior official of the Ministry of Justice's criminal affairs bureau.

Unless something leads Tokyo to change that attitude, the United States won't be totally isolated. At least on this one issue, in these two countries, East meets West.

Singapore death penalty shrouded in silence

ReutersApril 12, 2002SINGAPORE By Amy Tan

IN the quiet pre-dawn hours of a Friday, someone could be on their way to the gallows in Singapore's Changi prison. But no one knows for sure.

Capital punishment in the tiny island state has long been shrouded in silence, with little public debate about the issue and even less information on how the process is carried out.
"We do have a general policy not to give any information on the death penalty," a prison official told Reuters.

Even the families of those facing the gallows receive scant notice, and any information about the Friday hangings are typically released only after the deed has been done.
"Families are in a state of complete anxiety and lack of knowledge until very, very late in the day," said Tim Parritt, a spokesman for human rights watchdog Amnesty International. The system came under international scrutiny when a German woman last month found herself facing the death penalty after being charged with trafficking in slightly more than 500 grams of cannabis -- a drug now decriminalised in some parts of Europe. Julia Suzanne Bohl escaped the gallows after a Singapore court reduced the charges against her, but the 22-year old still faces a lengthy jail sentence.

Tough drug laws enacted in 1975 made the death sentence mandatory for trafficking in more than 15 grams (half an ounce) of heroin, 30 grams of cocaine or 500 grams of cannabis.
Singapore law assumes a person to be trafficking if they are found in possession of a certain quantity of drugs, thereby shifting the burden of proof to the accused.
Singapore caused a diplomatic storm in 1994 when it ignored Western appeals and hanged a Dutchman for trafficking heroin.

HIGH EXECUTION RATE

The prosperous city-state of four million, ruled by the People's Action Party for four decades, has had capital punishment for murder since its days as a British colony.

Those found guilty of kidnapping, treason and certain firearm offences could also face the gallows, although local civil rights group the Think Centre says about 70 percent of hangings are for drug offences. The government revealed recently, only in reply to a question in parliament, that 340 people were hanged between 1991 and 2000.

In a response to a Reuters query, it also said 22 people were executed for drug trafficking in 2001 and 17 in the year before.
Singapore has one of the highest execution rates in the world relative to its population, Amnesty's Parritt said.

The highest outright number of executions were carried out by China, the United States, Iran and Saudi Arabia, Amnesty said.
"(The) concern Amnesty has about Singapore is the lack of information issued on executions, the number of executions and the processes...which might feed a public debate and a higher level of public scrutiny about what is actually happening," Parritt said. Local activists say the lack of exposure and education about the death penalty has lead to scant public debate.
"The whole education (system) doesn't touch, from very young, on human rights at all," Think Centre president Sinapan Samydorai said.

Some 110 nations have abolished capital punishment in law or practice as of November 2001, while another 85 retain it. "The whole trend in the world right now is to re-look at the death penalty... If these things get highlighted too much it's also quite negative on Singapore," Samydorai said.

"It's a very sensitive issue (for the government)."
Western critics point to the "right to life" as a fundamental reason to abolish the death penalty, but Singapore has shrugged off such notions and looks unlikely to scrap it anytime soon.
"The basic difference in our approach springs from our traditional Asian value system which places the interests of the community over and above that of the individual," Singapore's Senior Minister Lee Kuan Yew said in a speech.

"In criminal law legislation, our priority is the security and well being of law-abiding citizens rather than the rights of the criminal to be protected from incriminating evidence."

LOW CRIME RATES

Amnesty says the death penalty is not a deterrent to the drug trade as runners, rather than the kingpins, are most at risk of facing the gallows.
But Singapore's low crime rates and general state of law and order has been held up as good reason to keep capital punishment. "There is widespread belief amongst lawmakers and the public in Singapore that the death penalty has worked," said National University of Singapore law professor, Michael Hor.

"Abolition would send the wrong message to criminal actors who might interpret such development as the government going soft on crime."

Amnesty has called on Singapore to commute the death sentence into long jail terms but chances of the public interest and debate needed to fuel such action seem remote.

"No government wants to take on Singapore because they are trading here too. They keep quiet except when their own nationals are arrested," Samydorai said.

"Nobody makes noise when a local is being hung."

10 Reasons to Oppose the Death Penalty

10 Reasons to Oppose the Death Penalty

Innocence and the Death PenaltyThe wrongful execution of an innocent person is an injustice that can never be rectified. Since the reinstatement of the death penalty, 133 men and women have been released from Death Row nationally.

The High Cost of the Death PenaltyIt costs far more to execute a person than to keep him or her in prison for life.

Victims' Perspectives on the Death PenaltyMany family members who have lost love ones to murder feel that the death penalty will not heal their wounds nor will it end their pain; the extended process prior to executions can prolong the agony experienced by the family.

International Views on the Death PenaltyThe vast majority of countries in Western Europe, North America and South America - more than 137 nations worldwide - have abandoned capital punishment in law or in practice.

Inadequate Legal RepresentationPerhaps the most important factor in determining whether a defendant will receive the death penalty is the quality of the representation he or she is provided.

DeterrenceScientific studies have consistently failed to demonstrate that executions deter people from committing crime anymore than long prison sentences.

Arbitrariness in the Application of the Death Penalty Politics, quality of legal counsel and the jurisdiction where a crime is committed are more often the determining factors in a death penalty case than the facts of the crime itself.

Religious Perspectives on the Death PenaltyAlthough isolated passages of religious scripture have been quoted in support of the death penalty, almost all religious groups in the United States regard executions as immoral.

Racial DisparitiesThe race of the victim and the race of the defendant in capital cases are major factors in determining who is sentenced to die in this country. In 1990 a report from the General Accounting Office concluded that "in 82 percent of the studies [reviewed], race of the victim was found to influence the likelihood of being charged with capital murder or receiving the death penalty, i.e. those who murdered whites were more likely to be sentenced to death than those who murdered blacks."

Alternatives to the Death PenaltyIn every state that retains the death penalty, jurors have the option of sentencing convicted capital murderers to life in prison without the possibility of parole. The sentence is cheaper to tax-payers and keeps violent offenders off the streets for good.