Japan Today

Death penalty bad for victims' relatives, U.S. campaigner says

In Tokyo, a son of a murdered man in the United States voiced opposition Saturday to the death penalty as "bad for victims of crime."

At a symposium on capital punishment in Tokyo, sponsored by the Japan Federation of Bar Associations, Renny Cushing, the executive director of Murder Victims' Families for Reconciliation, said bereaved families of victims are expected to welcome the execution of offenders, even if they are opposed to the death penalty.

Cushing told the audience of more than 200 people that there is a stereotype saying victims want or need the death penalty. But Cushing called such expectations "re-victimization" as they "take away my values."

Cushing's father was shot to death in 1988 but Cushing opposed capital punishment before the incident.

He said he wants to live in "a world where life is respected" and did not want to lose this values because of his father's murder. The change would "make the tragedy worse," he said.

Cushing, a former member of New Hampshire's state house of representatives, also noted that a society with the death penalty tends to focus on how offenders will be punished while ignoring victims.

He said people should think about what victims need and how to help them, and he showed appreciation of a JFBA proposal calling for establishing a system to fully support crime victims and bereaved families and to enable them to recover from their losses.

In the November 2002 proposal, Japan's largest lawyers' group said the government should suspend executions until public debate over capital punishment reaches a certain consensus, though the JFBA has never sought an end to the death penalty.

Cushing said he once drafted a bill to abolish the death penalty in order to say, as a member of a bereaved family, "no more killing."

His lecture is part of a series of nationwide JFBA symposiums on capital punishment prior to the federation's annual human rights meeting in October in the city of Miyazaki.

It will be the first time the JFBA brings up capital punishment at one of its human rights meeting.

The Tokyo symposium on Saturday will be followed by 6 others in Osaka, Sendai, Matsuyama, Sapporo, Hiroshima and Fukuoka.