Japan Hangs Two Convicted Murderers After Sentencing by 'Lay Judge' Court

Japanese authorities sent two convicted murderers to the gallows on Friday, including one of whom was the first prisoner sentenced to death by the country's relatively-new lay judge system, in which regular citizens decide on the guilt and sentence of defendants.

The prisoners were each convicted of brutal crimes. Sumitoshi Tsuda, 63, was found guilty of a triple-murder of his neighbors that occurred in 2009, while Kazuyuki Wakabayashi, 39, was convicted of strangling and bludgeoning a mother and daughter to death during an attempted robbery and rape in their home in 2006, according to the Japan Times. 

The death penalties were condemned by Amnesty International in Japan, which called them "disgraceful" and criticized the country for still practicing capital punishment.

"The Japanese authorities' willingness to put people to death is chilling and must end now before more lives are lost," Roseann Rife, East Asia research director for Amnesty, said in a statement. "The death penalty is not justice or an answer to tackling crime, it is a cruel form of punishment that flies in the face of respect for life."

Tsuda's conviction and death sentence were handed down by a civilian court under the country's new "lay judge" process, introduced in 2009, in which a panel of six civilians consults with three professional judges to make rulings, according to the report.

The system has been controversial for the burden it places on citizens to decide death penalty cases. One former lay judge, Masayoshi Taguchi, was one of 20 who called on the Justice Ministry to provide greater detail about how executions would be carried out in order to help citizens make their decisions, according to the report.

"It's like you are being told to keep driving while blindfolded, only to end up running over somebody," Taguchi said, saying citizens were kept in the dark over why prisoners were only given a few hours notice before their executions. He said lay judges "will forever be burdened" with the thought they may have taken someone's life without greater support from the justice system.

Amnesty International pointed out that today's two executions bring the total number of prisoners killed under Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to 14. According to the Associated Press, Japanese citizens overwhelmingly support the death penalty.