Death-Row Prisoners in Japan Sue Over Same-Day Notice of Executions

Two Japanese death-row pris­on­ers have filed a law­suit alleg­ing that the country’s long-crit­i­cized prac­tice of noti­fy­ing pris­on­ers of their exe­cu­tion the same day they are to be put to death is ​“inhu­mane” and vio­lates the nation’s constitution.

The suit, filed in Osaka District Court November 4, 2021, alleges that the day-of-exe­cu­tion notice, giv­en just hours before the death-row pris­on­er is hanged, pro­vides no time to con­tact their lawyers to file legal chal­lenges to the exe­cu­tion and is psy­cho­log­i­cal­ly tor­tur­ous. The pris­on­ers, whose names were not dis­closed, seek to end same-day exe­cu­tion noti­fi­ca­tion and demand com­pen­sato­ry dam­ages for emo­tion­al dis­tress in the amount of 22 mil­lion yen, rough­ly equiv­a­lent to $194,000.

“Death row pris­on­ers live in fear every morn­ing that that day will be their last. It’s extreme­ly inhu­mane,” the pris­on­ers’ lawyer, Yutaka Ueda, said. ​“Overseas, pris­on­ers are giv­en time to con­tem­plate the end of their lives and men­tal­ly pre­pare. It’s as if Japan is try­ing as hard as pos­si­ble not to let anybody know.”

The Japanese Justice Ministry had no com­ment about the mer­its of the suit, say­ing only that it would respond in court.

Amnesty International has repeat­ed­ly con­demned Japan’s exe­cu­tion pro­ce­dures as being ​“shroud­ed in secre­cy.” In a 2009 report, the human rights group said the prac­tice con­sti­tut­ed ​“cru­el, inhu­man and degrad­ing” treat­ment that caused pris­on­ers to devel­op ​“sig­nif­i­cant mental illness.”

Japanese death row pris­on­ers know that, at any time, the arrival of a prison offi­cer at their cell could sig­nal that they are the sub­ject of a death war­rant autho­riz­ing their exe­cu­tion with­in hours, the report said. ​“Some live like this year after year, some­times for decades.”

“Japan’s death row sys­tem is dri­ving pris­on­ers into the depths of men­tal ill­ness but they are still being tak­en and hanged at only hours’ notice in an utter­ly cru­el fash­ion,” Kate Allen, then the direc­tor of Amnesty International UK, told The Guardian.

Japan’s secre­cy prac­tices have drawn fire in recent U.N. human rights res­o­lu­tions. In December 2016, the U.N. General Assembly added an anti-secre­cy pro­vi­sion to its reg­u­lar res­o­lu­tion call­ing for a mora­to­ri­um on exe­cu­tions, say­ing that trans­paren­cy was essen­tial to assess whether coun­tries were admin­is­ter­ing their death penal­ty laws in com­pli­ance with inter­na­tion­al human rights standards. 

On October 5, 2021, the U.N. Human Rights Council adopt­ed a res­o­lu­tion that “[c]alls upon States that have not yet abol­ished the death penal­ty and that car­ry out exe­cu­tions either in secret or with lit­tle or no pri­or warn­ing to end these prac­tices, which impair the abil­i­ty of the con­vict­ed indi­vid­ual and fam­i­ly mem­bers to pre­pare for death and can amount to cru­el, inhu­man or degrading treatment.”

Japan and the United States are the only indus­tri­al­ized coun­try in the world to per­mit the death penal­ty. During its July 2020 to January 2021 spree in which 13 pris­on­ers were put to death, the U.S. fed­er­al gov­ern­ment con­duct­ed four post-mid­night exe­cu­tions after their exe­cu­tion dates had passed, pur­suant to hasti­ly issued same-day exe­cu­tion notices of ques­tion­able legal and constitutional validity. 

Japan’s Justice Ministry report­ed that there were 112 pris­on­ers on the nation’s death row as of November 5, 2021. The coun­try last con­duct­ed an exe­cu­tion in 2019.