Posted on 07/07/2002 7:23:18 AM PDT by mhking
July 6, 2002, 7:39PM
OSAKA, Japan -- When the hangman failed to summon him from his cell by late December, Toshihiko Hasegawa, a convicted murderer, reckoned that, by the practices of Japan's penal system, he had at least one more year to live.
After weeks of intense foreboding over the approach of death, Hasegawa wrote his adoptive mother to tell her that he could at last breathe freely again for one more year, when he expected that his execution watch would resume.
"It seems that I will somehow be able to survive this year's Christmas," he wrote. "This is thanks to you, Mother, who is praying to God for me every day, and I am really grateful. The fact I am about to survive this Christmas means I am newly given the precious time to devote myself to faith and atonement for my sins, and I have to use this time usefully, not to waste even a minute."
Two days later, though, without any advance notice to him or his family, the 51-year-old prisoner was led from his cell and hanged.
Takako Hasegawa, a 63-year-old Roman Catholic nun whose religious name is Sister Luisa and who adopted the death row inmate in 1993 after his conversion to Christianity, was informed several hours after the execution in a telephone call from the prisoner's sister.
"My head was just swimming," she said in an interview. "I was in shock."
Each year, around the year's end or early spring, depending on the prison, a handful of inmates are led from their cells and hanged. What does not vary is the policy of near total secrecy that the families of the executed and human rights groups say makes Japan's practice of capital punishment unnecessarily cruel.
Prisoners are told of their execution only moments before their hanging, and are given only enough time to clean their cells, write a final letter and receive last rites. Relatives are told of the execution only after the fact and are given 24 hours to collect the body.
Adding to the secrecy, the Ministry of Justice refuses to release the names of the hanged, except to their relatives, or even to confirm the number of prisoners on death row, which human rights lawyers now estimate at 56.
Because it typically executes only five or six prisoners each year, Japan has managed to keep a relatively low profile with international campaigners against the death penalty. The U.N. human rights commission, however, has condemned Japan's secretive executions.
Justice Ministry officials, for their part, insist that their system of secret executions is the most humane form of capital punishment.
"It would be more cruel if we notified the inmates of their execution beforehand because it would inflict a major pain on them," said Jun Aoyama, a ministry official. "They would lose themselves to despair. They might even try to commit suicide or escape."
In interviews, however, a former death row inmate and several relatives of executed prisoners all emphasized the severe anguish that the practice of secret executions had caused them.
It's sad that justice officials feel they owe these meddlers any explanation, let alone an apology.
One of the few things I belive China does right.
Except that in China you can get that bullet in your head and your family can get that bill because you spoke out against the Government.
Observe.
I want smaller government. But if the government decides that someone I don't know did something or other that the government doesn't like, KILL EM. Torture em if you can't kill em. If some Dopertarian Liberal Communist says you can't kill em, LOCK EM UP.
There, that's better, and it will get you fewer flames.
Read about it here...
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