¹ Studies of the death penalty in comparative and global perspective include Carsten Anckar, Determinants of the Death Penalty: A Comparative Study of the World (Routledge, 2004); Sangmin Bae, When the State No Longer Kills: International Human Rights Norms and Abolition of Capital Punishment (SUNY, 2007); David F. Greenberg and Valerie West, “Siting the Death Penalty Internationally, Law & Social Inquiry, Vol.33, Issue 2 (2008), pp.295-343; Roger Hood and Carolyn Hoyle, The Death Penalty: A Worldwide Perspective (Oxford, 2008, 4th edition); and Austin Sarat and Christian Boulanger, editors, The Cultural Lives of Capital Punishment: Comparative Perspectives (Stanford, 2005). On the death penalty in Asia, see the Special Issue of Punishment & Society, vol.10, no.2 (April 2008), pp.99-218.

² David T. Johnson and Franklin E. Zimring, The Next Frontier: National Development, Political Change, and the Death Penalty in Asia (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009).

³ Table 1 shows that in 2007 Japan's execution rate per million population was one-half that for the United States. But Stalinist nightmares aside, persons are not selected randomly for execution, they are condemned and executed from a larger pool of potentially capital cases. In Japan and America, this pool consists entirely of homicide crimes. Because Japan's homicide rate is much lower than that for the United States (in 2000 it was only one-tenth as high), its execution rate per homicide is often higher than the rate in the United States. See David T. Johnson, “Japan's Secretive Death Penalty Policy: Contours, Origins, Justifications, and Meanings,” Asian-Pacific Law & Policy Journal, Vol.7, Issue 2 (Summer 2006), pp.103-106; available here.

⁴ Andrew J. Nathan and Bruce Gilley, China's New Rulers: The Secret Files (New York Review Books, 2003), p.218.

⁵ Associated Press, “Rights Group: China Is World's Top Executioner,” July 29, 2009.

⁶ Pakistan has the largest death row population in the world, with some 7400 persons condemned to death as of 2007, but its execution rate has varied markedly in recent years. Its average annual execution rate per million population from 1996 to 2000 (0.07) was less than one-tenth the rates in China and Singapore over the same five-year period. But executions in Pakistan began increasing after that, going from 18 in 2003 to 21 in 2004, 52 in 2005, 83 in 2006, and 135 in 2007, before falling to 36 in 2008. See The News, “Debate Continues to Rage Over Effectiveness of Death Sentence,” March 30, 2009; Tahir Wasti, The Application of Islamic Criminal Law in Pakistan: Sharia in Practice (Leiden: Brill, 2009); and Johnson and Zimring, The Next Frontier, pp.20, 312.

⁷ On the causes and consequences of penal populism in Japan, see the Special Issue of Japanese Journal of Sociological Criminology, No.33 (2008).

⁸ See, for example, Roger Hood, “Capital Punishment: A Global Perspective,” Punishment & Society, Vol.3, No.3 (2001), p.341; and Nadeem Farhat Gilani, “Should Pakistan Abolish or Retain Capital Punishment?” Policy Perspectives, July-December 2009, pp.133-148.

⁹ James L. Payne, A History of Force: Exploring the Worldwide Movement against Habits of Coercion, Bloodshed, and Mayhem (Sandpoint, ID: Lytton, 2004), p.130.

¹⁰ For an account of the persistence of American capital punishment that is rooted in the history of race relations, see Franklin E. Zimring, The Contradictions of American Capital Punishment (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003). For other statistics about the death penalty in America, see www.deathpenaltyinfo.org.

¹¹ To qualify as “actually innocent” in this count, defendants must have been convicted, sentenced to death, and subsequently either (a) their conviction was overturned and (i) they were acquitted at re-trial or (ii) all charges were dropped, or (b) they were given an absolute pardon by the governor based on new evidence of innocence. Link. In Japan, four death row inmates were acquitted at retrial and released during the 1980s, but in the two decades since then there have been no more exonerations of the condemned. See Daniel H. Foote, “From Japan's Death Row to Freedom,” Pacific Rim Law & Policy Journal, Vol.1, No.1 (Winter 1992), pp.11-103; and Daniel H. Foote, “‘The Door That Never Opens‘? Capital Punishment and Post-Conviction Review of Death Sentences in the United States and Japan,” Brooklyn Journal of International Law, Vol.XIX, No.2 (1993), pp.367-521.

¹² For more details about execution declines in Asia, see Johnson and Zimring, The Next Frontier.

¹³ Of the 32 persons who were executed in Japan in the 37 months between January 2006 and January 2009, 17 were more than 60 years old. In September 2009, Amnesty International published a study reporting that some prisoners are being driven to insanity by the harsh conditions and prolonged incarceration on death row. See “Hanging by a Thread: Mental Health and the Death Penalty in Japan,” available here. Death row inmates in Japan usually wait years between the finalization of a death sentence and their own execution, but as death sentences increased in recent years, the delays have become shorter.

¹⁴ For a brief summary of capital punishment in Indonesia, see Johnson and Zimring, The Next Frontier, pp.323-324, and for a book-length discussion of the same subject, see Todung Mulya Lubis and Alexander Lay, Kontroversi Hukuman Mati: Perbedaan Pendapat Hakim Konstitusi (Jakarta: Kompas Penerbit Buku, 2009).

¹⁵ See Johnson and Zimring, The Next Frontier, p.33.

¹⁶ While Singapore has long been one of the most aggressive executing nations in Asia and the world, executions there have fallen markedly in recent years, from 138 in the three-year period 1995-1997 to an estimated total of 15 in 2005-2007—a 90 percent drop in 10 years. See Johnson and Zimring, The Next Frontier, p.410.

¹⁷ For case studies of capital punishment in South Korea and Taiwan, see Johnson and Zimring, The Next Frontier, pp.147-190 and 191-223, respectively. One key to political and social liberalization seems to be economic growth, not merely a high standard of living. Even wealthy nations put their progressive values at risk when income levels stagnate. In this light, the recent resurgence of capital punishment in Japan may partly reflect the economic stagnation the nation has experienced since its economy tanked in the early 1990s. See Benjamin M. Friedman, The Moral Consequences of Economic Growth (New York: Vintage Books, 2005).

¹⁸ Franklin Zimring, The Contradictions of American Capital Punishment (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), pp.35-37.

¹⁹ See Johnson and Zimring, The Next Frontier, p.302.

²⁰ Our stress on the political causes of capital punishment policy does not mean culture is irrelevant. Methodologically, the arbitrary separation of ideas from institutions frequently forces researchers to face insoluble questions. And substantively, some cultures are more effective than others at promoting prosperity, democracy, and social justice; see Lawrence E. Harrison, The Central Liberal Truth (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006). But while the British movement to abolish slavery had important cultural and religious roots, the cultural antecedents are less clear for the abolition of capital punishment. As the penultimate “Asian consistency” of this section explains, politics – and “leadership from the front” especially – is usually critical in death penalty policymaking.

²¹ For a more extensive discussion of the relations between judicial and extrajudicial killing, see Johnson and Zimring, The Next Frontier, pp.443-451.

²² For a case study of capital punishment in the Philippines, see Johnson and Zimring, The Next Frontier, pp.103-145.

²³ In China, however, the quantity and quality of death penalty discussions have increased in recent years.

²⁴ The concept of “human right” implies three interlocking qualities that seem to entail universality: “rights must be natural (inherent in human beings); equal (the same for everyone); and universal (applicable everywhere).” Lynn Hunt, Inventing Human Rights: A History (New York: Norton, 2007), p. 20.

²⁵ Quoted in Malaysians against the Death Penalty & Torture blog, March 21, 2006.

²⁶ “Excerpts from an Interview with Lee Kuan Yew.” International Herald Tribune, August 29, 2007.

²⁷ For more on the Singapore-Malaysia contrast, see Johnson and Zimring, The Next Frontier, pp.305-307 and 408-413.

²⁸ On the death penalty in Vietnam and North Korea, see Johnson and Zimring, The Next Frontier, pp.381-395 and 359-364, respectively.

²⁹ See, for example, Earl K. Wilkinson with Alan C. Atkins, Sentenced to Death: The Truth about Englishman Albert Wilson's Sentence and Eventual Acquittal in the Philippines (Zirndorf-Weiherhor, Germany: Book of Dreams, 2000).

³⁰ Johnson and Zimring, The Next Frontier, p.308.

³¹ Hong Lu and Terance D. Miethe, China's Death Penalty: History, Law, and Contemporary Practices (New York: Routledge, 2007), p.80.

³² As of September 2009, Japan had 102 inmates on death row with a finalized (kakutei) sentence of death.

³³ The number of executions in Japan surged to 15 in 2008—the highest annual total since 1975—but when the Democratic Party of Japan took control of government in September 2009, Keiko Chiba was appointed Minister of Justice, which is the authority that must sign an execution warrant in order for one to occur. Some informed observers believe that Chiba—a lawyer, a human rights activist, the secretary general of the Amnesty International group in Japan's Diet, and a former member of the Japan Socialist Party—is highly unlikely to authorize any executions during her tenure. One journalist even wrote that “her 20-year-long record as a death penalty abolitionist makes it a certainty that hangings will be put on hold.” See Richard Lloyd Parry, “Death Penalty Opponent Keiko Chiba Made Japanese Justice Minister,” The Independent, September 17, 2009.

³⁴ The “Anti-Death Penalty Asia Network” (ADPAN), an informal network of Asian individuals and organizations coordinated by Amnesty International and committed to abolition, was launched in October 2006. (link)

³⁵ For the argument that Japan soon will re-emerge as an assertive actor in regional and international politics, see Kenneth B. Pyle, Japan Rising: The Resurgence of Power and Purpose (New York: Public Affairs, 2007).

³⁶ Hankyoreh, “South Korean Government Pledges Non-Application of the Death Penalty,” September 2, 2009.

³⁷ See The Korea Times, “64% of Koreans Support Death Penalty,” February 21, 2009 (describing a public opinion poll that found 64 percent of adults supported capital punishment, 18 percent opposed it, and 17 percent were undecided); Sankei Shimbun, “Kankoku Yoron o Se ni: Shikei Fukkatsuron Waku,” February 4, 2009; and Kim Junghyun and Jon Herskovitz, “Serial Killer Case Tests South Korea's Execution Ban,” Reuters, February 4, 2009. As of January 2009, South Korea had 58 persons on death row.

³⁸ Tim Lindsey, “Sparing the Bali Bombers,” Melbourne Herald Sun, October 15, 2007.

³⁹ Eva Puhar, “The Abolition of the Death Penalty in Central and Eastern Europe: A Survey of Abolition Processes in Former Communist Countries,” Master's thesis, National University of Ireland, 2003; available here.

⁴⁰ Laos is also communist, and has been since the communist victory in Vietnam in 1975, but it has not carried out any judicial executions since 1989. How this has happened is unclear, for the death penalty in Laos has not been the subject of serious study.

⁴¹ Stephane Courtois, Nicolas Werth, Jean-Louis Panne, Andrzej Paczkowski, Karel Bartosek, and Jean-Louis Margolin. The Black Book of Communism: Crime, Terror, Repression (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1999).

⁴² On the death penalty in Cambodia, see Johnson and Zimring, The Next Frontier, pp.381-382.

⁴³ As explained earlier, one sign of change may be the appointment of abolitionist Keiko Chiba to be Japan's new Minister of Justice. See Richard Lloyd Parry, “Death Penalty Opponent Keiko Chiba Made Japanese Justice Minister,” The Independent, September 17, 2009. It is unclear what effect lay judge trials (which began in August 2009) will have on Japanese capital punishment. For a discussion of some of the possibilities, see Leah Ambler, “The People Decide: The Effect of the Introduction of the Quasi-Jury System (Saiban-In Seido) on the Death Penalty in Japan,” Northwestern University Journal of International Human Rights, Vol.6, No.1 (Fall 2007), pp.1-23; available here.