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New Amnesty International report on the death penalty in Japan

By Douglas A. Berman

As detailed in this new CNN piece, Amnesty International has issued a new report urging Japan's government "to establish a moratorium on executions and consider abolishing the death penalty." Here are more of the details from CNN: Death row inmates in Japan spend decades in isolation and face inhuman conditions that can lead to mental illness, Amnesty International said Thursday.  Amnesty urged Japan's new government to improve death row conditions.... As many as 102 prisoners face execution in Japan -- many of them elderly inmates who have lived in isolation for decades, the human rights group said.  However, the number of death row prisoners suffering from 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," Amnesty said...continue to full post

Full post as published by Sentencing Law and Policy on September 10, 2009 (boomark / email).