Photo/Illutration The execution chamber at the Tokyo Detention House (Pool)

A private-sector panel highlighted various problems with Japan’s capital punishment system, including the possibility of condemning innocent people, and suggested suspending executions until the flaws are sorted out.

The panel said “fundamental discussions” are needed at a commission to be established under the government or the Diet.

“The current system has many problems that should not be left unsolved, and it must not be allowed to continue as it is,” the panel said in a report compiled on Nov. 13.

Noting that a consensus will not be easy to form, the report suggested that the government consider suspending executions until a conclusion is reached at the proposed commission.

“In past discussions on the death penalty, supporters and opponents clashed with each other,” Makoto Ida, a professor of criminal law at Chuo Law School, who chairs the panel, told a news conference on Nov. 13. “Members of the panel tried to meet each other halfway.”

The report will be submitted to the government in the near future.

The panel was established in February at the initiative of the Japan Federation of Bar Associations, which called for abolishing the death penalty in a declaration adopted in 2016.

Through the panel, the federation sought to obtain a proposal from a broader range of perspectives.

The 16 panel members include ruling and opposition lawmakers, a bereaved family member of a crime victim and a former prosecutor-general.

The report said capital punishment has been abolished in more than 70 percent of countries, and the United Nations has repeatedly called on those who retain it to suspend executions.

“There is doubt that (the death penalty) is undermining Japan’s national interest,” it said.

The report noted that in Japan, five death-row inmates were exonerated through retrials, including the acquittal in October of Iwao Hakamada, who was convicted of multiple murders in 1966.

The panel underscored the need for a system that eliminates the possibility of such wrongful convictions.

At the news conference, Kana Sasakura, a professor of criminal law at Konan University, who serves as acting chairperson of the panel, said Hakamada’s case has demanded serious soul-searching from society on the death penalty system.

The report also called for bolstering support for crime victims and their bereaved families.

It said their feelings should always be taken into consideration in making decisions on criminal justice, but whether the death penalty should be retained to satisfy their demand for a harsh punishment is “another matter.”

The report said the prolonged state of fear of death-row inmates, who do not know when they will die until the day of the execution, is a “major issue.”

It said discussions are necessary on how inmates should be treated, whether hanging is an appropriate means of execution, and how to deal with the psychological burdens on officers responsible for carrying out death penalties.

The government has retained capital punishment partly based on its opinion polls. The one conducted in 2019 found that more than 80 percent of respondents said the death penalty is “unavoidable.”

However, the report said poll respondents are not sufficiently informed.

It proposed that explanations be given on how death-row convicts are treated during detention and that they are executed by hanging.

(This article was written by Kazumichi Kubota and Yusuke Morishita.)

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