Ten years have passed since the Saiban-in system was established in Japan in 2009.
With this system, even ordinary citizens can be selected as lay judges, and you may encounter a situation where you have to pass a heavy sentence of the death penalty.
Therefore, it is important to know the criteria for the death sentence.
The criteria for the death penalty are the Nagayama criteria shown below.
XNUMX: Crime quality of crime XNUMX: Motivation XNUMX: Cruelty XNUMX: Severity of consequences XNUMX: Victim feelings of bereaved family
XNUMX: Social impact XNUMX: Perpetrator's age XNUMX: Crime record XNUMX: Circumstances after the crime
The most important of these is number 18, the age of the offender. If the accused is under the age of 18, no matter how serious the crime, the accused will not be sentenced to death.In addition, 19 "severity of consequences" means the number of victims killed, and previously, if the defendant was 4 or 18 years old, he had to kill four people before he was sentenced to death. After the Hikariichi case was remanded to the Hiroshima High Court, a boy aged 2 years and 4 month at the time of the crime was sentenced to death for murdering two people. .
If the defendant is an adult over the age of 20, the death penalty is certain if he murders three or more people, and there have been many death sentences for two murders.In addition, there are cases where even if you kill only one person, you will be sentenced to death.Therefore, the number of victims killed is not the only determinant of death sentences.Rather, it largely depends on how selfishly the defendant killed him and how cruelly he killed him (Nagayama criteria 3 ``guilt of the crime'', 2 ``motivation'', and 1 ``cruelty'' are involved). ).In addition to the Nagayama criteria, the issues of "planning of the crime" and "possibility of rehabilitation" are also deeply involved.
``Planning of the crime'' refers to whether the victim went to the victim with the intention of killing him or stealing the money from the beginning (the murder was planned), or he went to the victim with the intention of taking the money, and as a result It differs depending on whether or not the person killed (without planning), and in the case of planning, there are many cases where the death penalty is imposed.
Up to this point, we have only talked about the Faculty of Law, but the area that requires the most psychological judgment is "possibility of rehabilitation."
If you look up the word ``rehabilitation'' in a dictionary, it is described as ``to revive, to be revived, to recover mentally, socially, and materially.If the judge judges that the possibility of rehabilitation is extremely low, the death penalty will be imposed, and if it is judged that the possibility of rehabilitation cannot be ruled out, the death penalty will be avoided.However, due to the cruelty of the crime, the criteria for judging the possibility of rehabilitation may be taken as guesswork.
In fact, what is the basis for saying that this defendant is "absolutely irreparable"?I would really like to see a psychiatrist or researcher in psychology create a standardized and clear scale.Alternatively, the death penalty could be abolished if psychologists developed a program that would ensure the rehabilitation of any defendant.
Although the Code of Criminal Procedure stipulates execution within six months after receiving a death sentence, in practice it is rare for a person to be executed while a request for a retrial is being filed.
In addition, death row inmates may spend decades in pretrial detention in detention centers without entering prison and being sentenced to imprisonment.
Currently, there are about 130 unexecuted death row inmates in Japan.There is no life imprisonment in Japan, so life imprisonment is the second most serious punishment after death penalty.
Although the Constitution prohibits cruel punishment, which one is more psychologically oppressing for the defendant: being killed at once or being forced to serve in prison for more than 30 years? is it.
From a global perspective, the abolition of the death penalty was a condition for joining the EU, and in the United States, the state of Washington abolished the death penalty in 2018 (the 20th state in the United States). is moving towards the abolition ofIf the sentence is later found to be a miscarriage of justice, the inmate can be released if he is imprisoned for life. It is the foundation of the bar association calling for the abolition.
On the other hand, in Japan, there is a strong tendency to consider the feelings of bereaved families whose family members were killed (Nagayama criteria 5), and the state cannot abolish the system in which criminals are killed on behalf of bereaved families who cannot take revenge on the defendant. It can be taken as
As a result, the country has become a rarity in the world, even though it is "such a safe country." It is the current state of our country that there is.
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