"The new proposal is clearly aimed at appeasing victims rather than fostering legal justice. I fear such a move, if passed, will turn the spotlight on the emotional aspect of a murder trial and work against the accused through harsher sentencing," Kei Itoh, a human rights lawyer, told IPS.
Itoh is currently fighting to overturn the death sentence handed down to Masaru Okunishi, an 81-year-old man who continues to claim innocence 37 years after his conviction for murder in five cases. Okunishi was originally found guilty of killing his wife, her lover and three others by serving them poisoned wine.
There have been five previous appeals, including one which overturned his sentence because of lack of evidence. But today Okunishi is back again on death row. Itoh is seeking a complete re-trial.
The main driving force behind the proposal to give crime victims the right to address the courts is lawyer Isao Okamura, 77, himself a crime victim. His wife was murdered in October 1999. Okamura today heads the Tokyo-based National Association of Crime Victims and Surviving Families, an organisation representing more than 3,000 families which argues that crime victims are getting a raw deal in Japan.
Okamura was stirred into action when the man found guilty of murdering his wife was given a life sentence rather than being sent to the gallows in 2001. "The ruling was unacceptable to me - both as a husband and a lawyer," he said in a recent newspaper interview.
Bereaved victims often remain bitter and resentful for years and desperately want a chance to speak out in court, Tsuneo Matsumura, spokesman for the association and a former prosecutor, told IPS.
"They cannot bear a system where they are forced to watch silently as the trial is conducted between prosecutors, defendants and the accused. We welcome the new proposal because crime victims will finally be allowed to speak out the truth publicly," he said. A judge would have powerful additional testimony based on their personal ties, something a prosecutor could never provide.
He refuted claims by opponents that if the proposal became a law it would work against a fair trial. The crime victims would only be allowed to testify after receiving permission from prosecutors who would ensure objectivity, he said.
But legal experts point out that the new proposal would mark out Japan in legal practice among most other countries. Japan is already one of the few countries in the industrialised world which continues to implement the death penalty. Last Christmas Day it executed four men, ending a 15-month pause in hanging while a Buddhist justice minister had refused to sign death warrants because of his conscience. Shouzo Inou, an anti-capital punishment activist, is adamantly against permitting crime victims standing up in trials.
Inou is the only activist permitted to visit Okunishi, now frail after surgery for stomach cancer. Okunishi still remains eager to clear his name before he dies. Many ordinary citizens are sympathetic and send letters of encouragement.
"Okunishi has suffered tremendously and so have his family members," Inou said, highlighting the often ignored suffering of the innocent family members of the accused in highly publicised capital trials. Okunishi's siblings and parents found it so difficult to endure the notoriety of their family connection in the poor farming community of Nabari, west of Tokyo, that they moved to a place where they could live in anonymity.
Opponents of the death penalty are calling now for a widespread public debate on the capital punishment system before the proposal is adopted into the legal system.
"We have to educate the public on the pitfalls of supporting the death penalty in Japan. The highly questionable practice of relying on confessions made in police custody suggests that there may be innocent victims out there (on death row)," Hiroyuki Ito, professor of political science at Ritsumeikan University, said, stressing this was one issue he would like addressed more openly.
In March, the Japanese media reported the concerns over one capital case voiced by Norimichi Kumamoto, a retired judge. Kumamoto and two colleagues presided over the trial of Iwao Hakamada, a professional boxer who was sentenced to death for murder in November 1980. Kumamoto told newspapers that he thought the evidence at the trial was insufficient for a conviction.
"Generally speaking, ordinary people tend to find it difficult to accept the notion that suspects are innocent until proven guilty," said Ito, addressing concerns that the proposal might undermine this basic legal principle. "It is important that lawyers keep this point in mind when defending suspects," he stressed.
Opponents of the scheme also believe it could harden attitudes still further against abolishing the death penalty in Japan. In the last government poll on capital punishment in February 2005, 80 percent of Japanese expressed support for the death penalty. Recent highly publicised murders have made it even more difficult for the government to go against the majority of public opinion and ban capital punishment, even if it wanted to, Ito said. One such case was the killing of a married woman and her young daughter by an 18-year-old man some eight years ago. The woman's husband, Hiroshi Motomura, is currently campaigning for the courts to set aside its life imprisonment sentence for the convicted killer, now 26, and send him to the gallows. The Hiroshima High Court has decided to review the sentence. The proposal to allow crime victims the right to address the courts has still not been formulated into a draft law. It will take two years at least for it to become law, according to Itoh. (IPS)
