[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----worldwide

[Rick Halperin]

Jan. 17



JAPAN:


Japan is one of the few developed countries to still have the death penalty. 
Documentary filmmaker Mori Tatsuya looks at the issue of capital punishment and 
tries to answer the question of why 80% of the Japanese populace supports 
judicial executions.

Choosing Who Lives and Dies

In July 2016, Japan was shocked by the stabbing deaths of 19 residents of a 
disabled care facility in Sagamihara, Kanagawa Prefecture. Public outrage 
swelled when a letter surfaced that was written by the perpetrator, a former 
employee of the facility, shortly before the incident. In this, he brashly 
declared that killing the mentally disabled helped minimize misery and that his 
actions were for the good of Japan and world peace. People across Japan 
condemned the killer for his eugenic thinking, proclaiming that all life has 
meaning and that no person has the right to choose who should live and who 
should die.

I agree that all human life is precious. It defies being ranked or quantified. 
Yet, if the public outcry we heard after the Sagamihara murders is to be 
believed, then I am obliged to point out that Japanese society remains 
willfully ignorant of the eugenic undertones of capital punishment.

The death penalty is the intentional and unnatural taking of human life that a 
court of law has judged to no longer have meaning or value. In Japan there is 
broad public support for the system, with more than 80% of citizens approving 
of judicial executions.

What is important to consider here is not that there is capital punishment in 
Japan, but why so many people in the country avert their eyes to the reality it 
represents. People, of course, are cognizant that Japan enforces the death 
penalty. However, they only give it passing recognition. Hardly anyone in their 
daily lives ever stops to consider how an inmate is actually put to death, what 
passes through their mind at the end, or how they spend their final days. More 
significantly, very few people ever contemplate what having the death penalty 
means to society.

Aum Shinrikyo on Death Row

For many years my interest in capital punishment was the same as most other 
Japanese. I felt it was a just and fair punishment for a person who had 
committed the grave crime of murder. I never questioned why a person who had 
taken another's life should also die. My confidence began to waver, however, 
after I interviewed 6 leaders of Aum Shinrikyo sitting on death row while I was 
shooting a documentary about the cult. As I sat and talked with these 
individuals the reality that I was speaking with people who were waiting to be 
killed gradually sank in.

Of course, all of us will die someday. Perhaps it will be in an accident, from 
illness, or simply due to old age. However, these were not to be the fate of 
the six men I sat speaking to through thick, transparent acrylic panels. These 
individuals were slated to be legally murdered.

Each of the cult leaders I interviewed said they regretted what they had done 
in the name of religious fanaticism. Many choked back tears, saying that it was 
only fair when considering how family members of victims must feel that they 
too should be killed.

I met with them many times. We also exchanged letters. When we talked, their 
words were not always those of regret. There were times when we joked and 
smiled. When I misunderstood a particular detail of their crime one might shout 
reproachfully, "It wasn't like that at all, Mori!" In short, these men were 
normal human beings. In some respects you could even say they were kinder and 
more genuine and upright than many people I had met.

Somehow I could not make sense of it. It is a sin to kill. These men had broken 
this fundamental human law, and as punishment they would be legally put to 
death. The logic defied me. I could not understand why they had to die or why 
society seemed justified in killing them.

This experience led me to begin reporting on capital punishment. In my work I 
interviewed a wide variety of people and pondered countless aspects as I 
struggled to gain an understanding of the issue. After more than 2 years of 
reporting, I compiled my experiences and thoughts into the book Shikei (Capital 
Punishment).

Allow me to begin with my conclusion: there is no one overriding, logical 
argument that justifies the death penalty. Japanese who are in favor of capital 
punishment like to cite its effectiveness in deterring crime. By this logic, 
then, one would expect public safety in the 2/3 of the world's nations that 
have abolished the death penalty to be in decline. The statistics, however, do 
not clearly bear this out. In fact, sociological research overwhelmingly shows 
the death penalty serves no significant function as a crime deterrent.

Many advocates of abolishing capital punishment point to the risk posed by 
false convictions. Proponents of the system, however, argue that such risks 
exist for all forms of criminal punishment and that abolishing the death 
penalty based on such a premise would effectively undermine the very foundation 
of the criminal justice system.

This is a false argument as the 2 punishments could not be more different. 
Incarceration restricts a criminal???s freedom, whereas capital punishment 
results in their death. While behind bars there is hope that an offender can be 
rehabilitated and eventually rejoin society. Executing a prisoner eliminates 
any such chance. Imagine a legal system where the punishment for breaking a 
person's arm was to break the arm of the perpetrator. This would be no 
different than the eye-for-an-eye reprisals of the Babylonian Code of Hammurabi 
and would hardly be compatible with the spirit of modern jurisprudence. Yet the 
death penalty is the lone form of criminal punishment that is still based on 
this ancient idea of retributive justice. Its finality - once carried out a 
prisoner can never be freed if later found innocent - gives the potential of 
wrongful conviction weightiness far beyond that of other punishments.

Out of Consideration for Victim's Families

Ultimately, many death penalty advocates do not rely on logical arguments, but 
base their position on the feelings of the family of victims. When a heinous 
killing occurs in Japan, the media is quick to play up the bitterness and 
hatred of the victim's relatives toward the attacker. Exposed to this 
emotionally charged coverage, readers and viewers naturally feel sympathy 
toward the family, certain they would harbor the same thoughts if it was one of 
their own loved ones who had been murdered. Seen in this light, the death 
penalty serves to assuage the grief and anger of the victim's family. Its 
justification, then, does not have a logical foundation, but is based on the 
raw desire for retribution.

Society, of course, must do all it can to help and support family members in 
dealing with such an incomprehensible act of violence as murder. There is an 
endless array of issues that families face, many of which can be addressed 
through social programs providing emotional and psychological care. However, 
supporting survivors and vengeance against the perpetrator do not occupy the 
same space. If maturity is responding to calamity in a calm and logical manner, 
then we must say that Japan has yet to grow up when it comes to considering the 
death penalty.

When I make the case for ending capital punishment I am often asked if I would 
feel the same if my own child had been killed. I generally preface my response 
by acknowledging the sheer impossibility of knowing how I would react, and then 
follow by saying that instead of the death penalty I would prefer to kill the 
perpetrator with my own hands.

Understandably, many people are taken aback by this and some even accuse me of 
having double standards. My response is that it is only natural to have double 
standards. If my child was killed, I would suffer from the crime too.

It is important that we try to empathize with the victim and their family. Yet 
it is also important that we acknowledge that we can never truly understand 
their thoughts and emotions without experiencing a similar trauma in our own 
lives.

Many family members of victims that I have met are wracked by guilt, even while 
harboring a strong desire for retribution. They endlessly berate themselves, 
asking such questions as "Why did I let you go out that night?" or "Why did I 
take my eyes off you?" These are the things that while kneeling alone in front 
of the family Buddhist altar they repeatedly wail to their lost loved ones. 
Carrying such remorse must be a living hell. People who support the death 
penalty, however, have no way of understanding such heartrending agony. Even as 
they tell me in voices quivering with emotion how they understand the feelings 
of the survivors, all they can really relate to is a banal desire for revenge.

The truth is that more than 1/2 of all murders in Japan are committed by family 
members. In such situations it is difficult for others in the family to speak 
out, and the media, too, tends to tone down its coverage. As a result, a 
majority of murders in Japan go unnoticed by the public, and very few people 
are even willing to imagine that surviving family members of these killings 
exist.

Again, if one is going to hold up the feelings of family members as a pillar 
for maintaining capital punishment, then should we not seek a lighter sentence 
if the victim has no immediate family? This is not logical, of course, but such 
crimes actually occur. If such exceptions were made, however, the very 
cornerstone of modern criminal justice would collapse. In short, emotion would 
defeat logic, a situation that would invite innumerable legal inconsistencies. 
The 80% of the population who support the death penalty choose to remain 
oblivious to this contradiction. Instead of honestly and logically considering 
the issue, they avert their eyes. This is where Japan stands today regarding 
capital punishment.

(source: Mori Tatsuya, nippon.com)






PHILIPPINES:

50 congressmen raring to block death penalty bill


The absence of a solid stance on the death penalty bill among majority bloc 
lawmakers will kill its chances of passage, opposition congressmen declared 
Tuesday.

Representatives Edcel Lagman of Albay and Teodoro Baguilat of Ifugao claimed 
that about 50 lawmakers would line up to debate the bill???s proponents, even 
as Speaker Pantaleon Alvarez of Davao del Norte said he was confident the bill 
would hurdle Congress in just 30 days.

"If there will be a conscience vote, then definitely, it will not pass. But the 
Speaker wants a party vote, which is a pressure vote. So members of the House 
[from the majority]who are against the death penalty may be pressured to not 
attend the session anymore [when it is time to cast the vote]," Lagman told 
reporters.

Lagman is familiar with such maneuver, which led to the passage of his pet 
Reproductive Health (RH) bill in 2012 after some members of the then ruling 
Liberal Party (LP) did not show up during voting on the divisive birth-control 
measure.

At that time, the LP was overwhelmingly for the RH bill, which became Republic 
Act 10354.

In the current 17th Congress, the ruling party is President Rodrigo Duterte's 
PDP-Laban, of which Alvarez is a member. There are at least 62 PDP-Laban 
members in the House of Representatives, but the PDP-Laban is just one of the 
parties under the "Super Majority" coalition that includes the Nacionalista 
Party, Nationalist People's Coalition, National Unity Party, LP and Lakas-CMD.

Also part of the Super Majority coalition is the anti-death-penalty Makabayan 
bloc of party-list groups Bayan Muna, Gabriela, Kabataan, Alliance of Concerned 
Teachers and Anakpawis.

In a news conference, Alvarez admitted he had yet to talk with PDP-Laban's 
coalition partners but said he was confident the President's allies would toe 
the line.

"I am very confident that we can pass it because we have a coalition, the Super 
Majority. If ever there will be people who will deviate from that, their number 
would just reach to as much as 10," Alvarez said.

(source: The Manila Times)

*******************

Death penalty seen harder to bring back to life in Senate----Reviving the death 
penalty would not be as easy in the Senate as it appears to be in the House of 
Representatives.


House Speaker Pantaleon D. Alvarez is confident there will be enough votes to 
secure the passage of the death penalty bill, with his chamber set to begin 
debates on the measure next week.

"We will allow the debate so we can hear the sides of the majority. Hopefully, 
30 days is probably long enough to finish deliberations here in the House," Mr. 
Alvarez said in a news conference on Tuesday, Jan. 17.

"I am very confident that we can pass it. Well, we have the coalition, we have 
the supermajority, if there are some who will vote against it, probably around 
5 to 10 only," he added.

Asked if there will be a "consequence" for majority members who will not 
support the revival of the death penalty, Mr. Alvarez said: "None. They're 
still congressmen."

Members of the majority who expressed opposition to the death penalty are House 
Deputy Speaker Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, PBA party-list Rep. Jericho Jonas B. 
Nograles, and the 7-member Makabayan bloc. Ms. Arroyo abolished the death 
penalty in 2006 when she was president.

House justice committee chairman Reynaldo V. Umali said on Monday the House may 
pass the death penalty on 3rd and final reading before the First Regular 
Session ends in June, together with another legislative priority of President 
Rodrigo R. Duterte to lower the minimum age of criminal liability to 9 years 
old from the current 15.

The House deferred last year the measure's approval on 2nd reading to give way 
for full debates this month of January.

In a statement, Presidential Spokesperson Ernesto C. Abella said Malacanang 
"respects the efforts of the House of Representatives, a separate co-equal 
branch of government, for prioritizing the death penalty bill."

The European Union (EU) is observing this development in Congress. On Monday, 
EU ambassador Franz Jessen said a monitoring team "will come later this month" 
to see if the country is compliant with conditions of the Generalized System of 
Preferences Plus (GSP+) scheme, which has accommodated tariff-free Philippine 
exports to the EU since December 2014.

Compliance with 27 international conventions under GSP+ includes a commitment 
against capital punishment, which the EU opposes.

As for the death penalty's approval in the Senate, its President Pro-Tempore 
Franklin M. Drilon told reporters before Tuesday's plenary: "You can never 
predict what the Senate will do."

The Liberal Party (LP) stalwart reiterated that the party has taken the 
position against the death penalty.

"So when it comes to the floor, we will state our position, and we will 
accordingly express our opposition," added the Liberal Party (LP) stalwart who, 
like his party allies Francis N. Pangilinan, Leila M. de Lima, Paolo Benigno A. 
Aquino IV and minority leader Ralph G. Recto, also oppose the death penalty.

Others against reviving the death penalty are Senate Committee on Justice Chair 
Richard J. Gordon, LP ally and Akbayan Senator Ana Theresia 
Hontiveros-Baraquel, and Minority Senators Francis G. Escudero and Antonio F. 
Trillanes IV.

Yet the death penalty bill is a priority in the Senate, according to Senator 
Panfilo M. Lacson, chairperson of the Senate committee on public order.

"Here in the Senate all 24 of us would like to be heard and would like to argue 
what our convictions are on a certain issue," said Mr. Lacson, who is one of 
the bill's authors.

With regard to the committee Mr. Gordon heads, Mr. Lacson suggested a separate 
sub-committee to tackle the bill.

"So I had a previous prior suggestion, if we can create [a] subcommittee, say, 
to be chaired by Senator [Emmanuel D.] Pacquiao because after all he is an 
author,...[t]hat would speed up hearings on the death penalty and whoever will 
defend the bill is really in favor of it," said Mr. Lacson, a former chief of 
the Philippine National Police.

Besides Senators Lacson and Pacquiao, Senators Sherwin T. Gatchalian, Joseph 
Victor G. Ejercito, and Senate Majority Leader Vicente C. Sotto III favor the 
bill.

"It's hard to get a read of the [other Senators], you can see that some of them 
are silent on the issue," Mr. Lacson said. "Which way it will go, we do not 
know."

(source: bworldonline.com)

*****************

Legislative battle on Death Penalty begins


The debate on the controversial death penalty bill takes center stage in the 
House of Representatives as Congress resumes session.

The House leadership said they intend to vote on the bill after 30 session days 
of debate.

But for such a controversial measure, its fate lies on public support and, 
eventually, on the number of votes it can gain from lawmakers.

House Speaker Pantaleon Alvarez could only bank on the majority coalition to 
get the green light for the death penalty bill. He says he's confident it would 
pass the debates.

"We have a coalition, we have a supermajority. If there will be some who will 
take a different direction, there's only about 5 or 10."

Equally confident is the House Minority bloc - which believes the bill won't 
make it in Congress.

They claim they have the numbers to block its approval.

Lagman claims a number of members from the super majority, including allies of 
President Duterte are now rethinking their support for death penalty.

Among them, PBA Party-list Rep. Jericho Nograles. In a text message to CNN 
Philippines, Nograles explained, while he is pro-administration, he is also 
pro-life.

"I cannot support the death [p]enalty bill. I believe that Congress must 
prioritize legislation increasing the number of courts, prosecutors, and public 
attorneys so we can speed up the judicial process from the average of 7 years 
for the 1st decision down to hopefully less than a year trial," Nograles said.

"It is my duty to play an active role in the debates and I hope that the 
debates will be factual," he added.

Alvarez said he expects the bill would be voted on after a month of debates, 
but Lagman thinks it will take longer than that.

Lagman said at least 50 congressmen have signified their intent to ask 
questions about the bill.

He recalled it took him and then Cebu Representative Pablo Gacia about 3 weeks 
during the 13th Congress to finish their questions during debates on the 
abolition of the death penalty.

For his part, Ifugao Representative Teddy Baguilat said the leadership should 
make sure there is quorum during the debates.

"When we start the debates, if the interpellation will take long and there 
would be no quorum, the debates will cease."

Akbayan Party-list Rep. Tom Villarin also said the church, civil society 
groups, and even international parliamentarians are ready to go all out against 
the reimposition of death penalty.

(source: cnnphilippines.com)