An executioner , also known as a hangman or headsman , is an official who effects a sentence of capital punishment on a condemned person.
72-407: The executioner was usually presented with a warrant authorising or ordering him to execute the sentence. The warrant protects the executioner from the charge of murder . Common terms for executioners derived from forms of capital punishment—though they often also performed other physical punishments—include hangman ( hanging ) and headsman ( beheading ). In the military, the role of executioner
144-591: A capital crime is to be executed in Japan, the execution warrant is signed by the Minister of Justice, after internal consultations within the justice ministry. As of 2007, according to a BBC report of statements in Japanese media, men condemned are kept in 'toilet-sized cells'. Once the final approval for execution is signed, it takes place within five business days. (By statute, the execution cannot take place on
216-490: A condemned person. In the United States either a judicial or executive official designated by law issues an execution warrant. This is done when a person, in trial court proceedings, has been sentenced to death, after trial and conviction , and usually after appeals are exhausted. Normally when a death warrant is signed and an execution date is set, the condemned person is moved from his or her death row cell to
288-524: A "harsh regime and in solitary confinement with the ever-present fear of execution. They never know if each day will be their last." Hogg also expresses the view that, as of 2007, per the United Nations Human Rights Committee 's International Convenants, this "failure to give advanced notice... is incompatible with articles 2, 7 and 10 of [that agency's convenant] on Civil and Human Rights ...". As of 2007, neither
360-526: A 2005 Amnesty International report: Most have been sentenced to death on the basis of confessions extracted under duress. The potential for miscarriages of justice is built into the system: confessions are typically extracted while suspects are held in daiyo kangoku , or "substitute prisons", for interrogation before they are charged. In practice these are police cells, where detainees can be held for up to 23 days after arrest, with no state-funded legal representation. They are typically interrogated for 12 hours
432-462: A Saturday or Sunday, but also not on a national holiday or between 31 December and 2 January. ) Executions reported in December 2007 were performed by hanging; the condemned were not told "that they are to be hanged until the last possible minute". As of 2008, the method of hanging was reported to be by "long drop". Executions carried out by hanging take place in an execution chamber within
504-565: A cup of sherbet , and if the sherbet was white, they would avoid death, but if it was red, they would be executed on the spot by janissaries . Grand viziers could avoid execution by racing the bostancibaşi. If they reached the Fish Market Gate (on the southern side of the palace complex) from the Central Gate of the palace complex before the bostancibaşi, they would be banished instead of being executed. If they were slower than
576-402: A day: no lawyers can be present, no recordings are made, and they are put under constant pressure to confess. Once convicted, it is very difficult to obtain a re-trial and prisoners can remain under sentence of death for many years. Some critics claim that coerced confessions are responsible for Japan's high conviction rate; as of 2017, the conviction rate in Japan was 97.8%. Legal scholars, on
648-498: A death sentence to life or raise a life sentence to death. Ultimately, a five-member petty bench of the Supreme Court has the final say on the penalty, Article 411 of Code of Criminal Procedure allowing it to remand the case or change the punishment if the one handed down by the high court is "seriously unfair". In only three cases since 1945 has the Supreme Court ruled a high court-imposed life sentence too lenient and ordered
720-468: A death watch cell, which is typically located adjacent to the execution chamber . Usually, the government agency charged with carrying out an execution, normally the state's Department of Corrections or the Federal Bureau of Prisons in federal cases, has a limited time frame, normally about 60 days, from the date the warrant is signed, to complete the execution process, or the warrant expires and
792-425: A further reduction in the number of crimes punishable by death, and methods of execution were restricted to beheading or hanging. However, such sentiments would see a sharp reversal after World War I as the country descended into militarism up to World War II , and after the country's defeat , continuing towards post-war Japan until today. Today, executions in Japan are carried out by long drop hanging , which
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#1732765268778864-410: A life sentence, and she acted as the county 's hangwoman from then on. An unidentified woman hanged two men for murder on 13 November 1782 at Kilmainham , near Dublin. The men were also quartered . The sheriff received abuse for making a hangman of a woman. Execution warrant An execution warrant (also called death warrant or black warrant ) is a writ that authorizes the execution of
936-539: A mask? Everybody knew who he was". While this task can be occasional in nature, it can be carried out in the line of more general duty by an officer of the court, the police , prison staff , or even the military . A special case is the tradition of the Roman fustuarium , continued in forms of running the gauntlet , where the culprit receives their punishment from the hands of the comrades gravely harmed by their crime, e.g. for failing in vital sentinel duty or stealing from
1008-470: A precedent, this guideline has been followed by all subsequent capital cases in Japan. The nine criteria are as follows: The number of victims killed is the most important criterion for imposition of a death sentence. A death sentence handed down for a single murder (previous convictions included) is considered "extraordinary". In 2012, a research institute affiliated with the Supreme Court issued
1080-450: A prisoner who committed the first of several murders as a juvenile, was executed during the sentencing phase of "Sakakibara Seito" for the Kobe child murders , also resulting in a high-profile juvenile murder trial – an attempt, according to South Asia Human Rights Documentation Center, to show that the harshest punishment could be administered to juveniles. According to The New York Times ,
1152-790: A report on application of capital punishment from 1980 to 2009. The study found that, while prosecutors very rarely demand the death penalty in cases of single murder, death sentences were passed in 32% of those cases where they requested it. On the other hand, prosecutors seek the death penalty almost systematically in cases of multiple homicide, and 59% of cases of double-murder and 79% of cases where three or more victims have been killed result in death sentences being passed. The study also found that death sentences were passed in all cases of convicted murderers who killed again after being released on parole from life prison terms , and in all robbery -murder cases with three or more people killed. Furthermore, in 5 of 10 kidnap-for-ransom cases in which one person
1224-473: A retrial for death sentence. Among them are Norio Nagayama and Takayuki Fukuda , both under 20 at time of crime. The third case was that of a man convicted of murdering an elderly woman for robbery shortly after being paroled from a life sentence imposed for a similar crime. According to Article 475 of the Japanese Code of Criminal Procedure, the death penalty must be executed within six months after
1296-415: A ship's limited food supply. Many executioners were professional specialists who traveled a circuit or region performing their duty, because executions were rarely very numerous. Within this region, a resident executioner would also administer non-lethal physical punishments , or apply torture . In medieval Europe, to the end of the early modern period , executioners were often knackers , since pay from
1368-480: A single murder have been sentenced to death and executed, such as those involving torture, extreme brutality or kidnapping with a demand for ransom. Since 2000, 98 inmates have been executed in Japan, with the most recent being the execution of Tomohiro Katō, the perpetrator of the Akihabara massacre in 2008, who was executed on 26 July 2022. There are currently 107 death row inmates awaiting execution. Japan
1440-642: A stay of execution. In all cases, the stay may be issued at any time, even when the condemned is being prepared for execution. List of people in The United States with pending execution warrants. Mary, Queen of Scots , whose death warrant was signed by Elizabeth I , and King Charles I were among the most famous victims of death warrants in British history. Capital punishment in Japan#Execution Capital punishment
1512-458: A toilet. One of its biggest criticisms is that inmates usually remain for years (and sometimes decades) on death row without ever actually being informed of the date of their execution prior to the date itself, so inmates suffer due to the uncertainty of not knowing whether or not any given day will be their last. According to Amnesty International, the intense and prolonged stress means many inmates on death row have poor mental health, suffering from
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#17327652687781584-607: Is a legal penalty in Japan . The Penal Code of Japan and several laws list 14 capital crimes. In practice, though, it is applied only for aggravated murder . Executions are carried out by long drop hanging , and take place at one of the seven execution chambers located in major cities across the country. The only crime punishable by a mandatory death sentence is instigation of foreign aggression. Death sentences are usually passed in cases of multiple murders, although there have been some extremely grave cases where individuals who committed
1656-466: Is intended to cause death by breakage of the neck . Below is a table containing the various crimes for which the death penalty is provided, as well as a citation to the requisite legal provision itself and whether or not the penalty is mandatory or discretionary. In Japan, the courts follow guidelines laid down in the trial of Norio Nagayama , a 19-year-old from a severely disadvantaged background, who committed four separate robbery-murders in 1968 and
1728-484: Is justified and only to those who have committed the most extreme of crimes — a single murder is not considered to warrant a death sentence unless there are additional aggravating circumstances, such as rape or robbery. In the 1956 debate, Japanese serial killer Genzo Kurita , who engaged in rape and necrophilia , was cited by the Diet as an example of a murderer whose crimes were atrocious enough to merit death. However, it
1800-532: Is more the rarity of extreme crimes in Japanese society rather than an unwillingness of the authorities to carry out executions that has caused so few executions to take place. Since executions resumed in 1993, a rise in street crime during the 1990s, the sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway in 1995 have hardened attitudes amongst the public and the judiciary. Since 1999, there have been a series of cases in which criminals sentenced to life imprisonment have been given
1872-465: Is one of four developed democracies worldwide to actively apply the death penalty. According to the Kojiki , Japan's oldest historical book, the death penalty is believed to have first appeared in Japan in the first half of the 5th century during the reign of Emperor Nintoku . Methods of execution during this period included strangulation, beheading , and burning to death, and in some special cases,
1944-546: Is part of the Eyüp Cemetery in Istanbul . The town of Roscommon has the distinction of having had Ireland 's most notorious hangwoman, Lady Betty , who was given the post in exchange for her life being spared when the hangman due to execute her death sentence took ill on the day that she and 25 others were due to be hanged. Lady Betty offered to carry out the task in exchange for her death sentence being commuted to
2016-605: The Kamakura period (1185–1333), the only method of capital punishment was beheading, and felons in particular were displayed to the public as an example after their execution. The Muromachi period (1333–1573) largely followed the Kamakura period method of capital punishment. On the other hand, seppuku , which appeared as a method of suicide in the Heian period, was first used as a method of capital punishment in this period. From
2088-472: The Ministry of Justice , whose officials sincerely believed that such mistakes by the system were almost impossible. Between 1989 and 1993, four successive ministers of justice refused to authorise executions, which amounted to an informal moratorium . The British newspaper The Times claimed that the death penalty was "effectively suspended" on 17 September 2009 with the appointment of Keiko Chiba , who
2160-646: The Nara period (710–794), the death penalty was infrequently used, and the death penalty was abolished completely in the Heian period (794–1185). The death penalty was not used for 346 years following the execution of Fujiwara no Nakanari in 810, until it was revived during the Hōgen rebellion of 1156. However, during the Genpei War (1180–1185), the death penalty by sawing and crucifixion may have been carried out. During
2232-532: The Ottoman Empire , the role of executioners was given to the Ottoman gardeners , bodyguards who guarded the sultan's palace. Members of the gardeners conducted executions of anyone whom the sultan wanted executed, but the most senior officials who were sentenced to death were dealt with by the head of the gardeners ( Turkish : bostancıbaşı ) in person. Bostancibaşi would give the person sentenced to death
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2304-545: The Sengoku period to the Azuchi-Momoyama period , the methods of execution became more varied and cruel, reflecting the climate of warfare. The following methods of execution were used: skewering with a yari , burying them in the ground from the neck down and cutting off their heads with a bamboo saw, tying the criminal's legs to two oxen and tearing the legs apart, tying the criminal's legs to two wheels and tearing
2376-414: The burakumin class (today executions in Japan are not carried out by professional executioners, but by prison guards). In Memories of Silk and Straw , by Junichi Saga, one of the families surveyed in the Japanese village of Tsuchiura is that of an executioner family ("The Last Executioner", p. 54). This family does suffer social isolation, even though the family is somewhat well-off financially. In
2448-551: The guillotine since the French Revolution ) persisted until 1977, and the French Republic had an official executioner; the last one, Marcel Chevalier , served until the formal abolition of capital punishment in 1981. In Western Europe and its colonies, executioners were often shunned by their neighbours, with their work as knackers also disreputable. In Alexandre Dumas ' The Three Musketeers and in
2520-476: The Sengoku period, such as execution by oxen, were continued, but, in 1742, during the reign of Tokugawa Yoshimune , a new law was enacted that changed the method of capital punishment and lessened its severity. Under the new law, the only methods of capital punishment were sawing, crucifixion, beheading, burning at the stake, and seppuku. Burning at the stake applied only to arsonists, while seppuku applied only to
2592-462: The Tachikawa and Takamatsu High Courts are carried out in the Tokyo and Osaka Detention Centers. Those on death row are not classified as prisoners by the Japanese justice system and the facilities in which they are incarcerated are not referred to as prisons. Inmates lack many of the rights afforded to other Japanese prisoners. The nature of the regime they live under is largely up to the director of
2664-678: The age of 18, Japan sets the minimum age for capital punishment at 18 (Juvenile Law § 51). Prior to April 2022, the age of majority in Japan was 20 years of age (as per 1876 legislation). Although death sentences for minors aged 18 or 19 years were rare, those who committed capital crimes at those ages could be legally sentenced to death. Between 1966 and 2022, nine juvenile criminals received death sentences that were finalized: Misao Katagiri , Kiyoshi Watanabe, Mitsuo Sasanuma, Fumio Matsuki, Sumio Kanno, Tsuneo Kuroiwa, Norio Nagayama , Teruhiko Seki and Takayuki Mizujiri. Eight of them have already been executed and Watanabe, who killed four people when he
2736-451: The age of 95, after awaiting execution for 32 years, while Iwao Hakamada spent 58 years on death row before being found not guilty in a retrial. Japanese death row inmates are imprisoned inside the detention centers of Tokyo , Osaka , Nagoya , Sendai , Fukuoka , Hiroshima and Sapporo . Despite Tachikawa and Takamatsu having high courts, neither city has a detention center equipped with execution chambers; executions imposed by
2808-672: The bostancibaşi, they would be executed and their body would be thrown into the sea. This custom lasted until the nineteenth century. The last recorded person to participate in a race with the bostancibaşi was grand vizier Hacı Salih Pasha who, in November 1822, outran the bostancibaşi and saved his life. He was so widely esteemed for winning the race that he got appointed governor general of the Damascus province. Executioners had their own graveyards, with uncarved and unpolished simple rough stones used as gravestones. The biggest of these graveyards
2880-706: The condemned person is returned to the death row cell, awaiting another execution date. Stays of execution can be ordered in state cases by the Governor of the State , a trial court, a state appeals court or state Supreme Court or a court in the federal judiciary (including the United States Supreme Court ). In federal death penalty cases the trial court, appeals courts, the United States Supreme Court and President may grant
2952-468: The death penalty after prosecutors successfully appealed to high courts. On 18 March 2009, a district court sentenced to death two men for the murder of Rie Isogai . Fumiko Isogai, who lost her only child in this crime, launched a campaign to call for the death penalty on the three murderers in September 2007. Within ten days, her petition was signed by 100,000 citizens. She presented her petition for
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3024-457: The death penalty was carried out and then exposed to public view. The Taihō Code and the Yōrō Code stipulated two methods of capital punishment: beheading and strangulation. In 773, the method of beating to death was added for arsonists and thieves, bringing the total to three methods of capital punishment. The execution of the death penalty required the approval of the emperor. Beginning in
3096-563: The death penalty with some 150,000 signatures to the District Public Prosecutors' Office of Nagoya on 23 October 2007. About 318,000 citizens had signed her petition by December 2008. Although single murderers rarely face a death sentence in Japan, Takeshi Tsuchimoto, a criminal law scholar at Hakuoh University and former prosecutor of the Supreme Public Prosecutors' Office, expected that
3168-417: The death sentence rate nor the execution rate has a statistically significant effect on... homicide and robbery-homicide rates" in Japan, while acknowledging both that important variables related to these rates may have been overlooked, and that the principle conclusion does not imply that these rates do not have a deterrent effect (as "failure to reject a null hypothesis does not imply that the null hypothesis
3240-519: The detention center, but it is usually significantly harsher than normal Japanese prisons. Inmates are held in solitary confinement and are forbidden to communicate with their fellows. They are permitted two periods of exercise a week, are not allowed televisions and may only possess three books. Prison visits, both by family members and legal representatives, are infrequent and closely supervised. As of 21 December 2021, 107 inmates currently sit on death row awaiting execution. When someone convicted of
3312-554: The detention center. When the death warrant has been signed, the condemned prisoner is informed on the morning of their execution. Some report that the condemned is given a choice of a last meal , others reporting (as of 2007) that at the time the condemned last eats, they do not know that the meal will be their last. Chris Hogg of the BBC reports Amnesty International 's perspective—which combines description and interpretation regarding conditions and foreknowledge—that condemned live under
3384-624: The execution of Tsutomu Miyazaki after the Akihabara massacre was claimed to be a similar case. Supporters say that due to capital punishment, it acts as a deterrence which resulted in Japan having one of the lowest murder rates in the world , only after Singapore , which also practices capital punishment. A 2020 study by Daisuke Mori of the Kumamoto University Faculty of Law, important for its thorough review and replication of all earlier such studies, carefully examined deterrence correlations and concluded that "neither
3456-474: The failure of the prisoner's final appeal upon an order from the Minister of Justice . However, the period requesting retrial or pardon is exempt from this regulation. Therefore, in practice, the typical stay on death row is between five and seven years; a quarter of the prisoners have been on death row for over ten years. For several, the stay has been over 30 years. Sadamichi Hirasawa died of natural causes at
3528-718: The film La veuve de Saint-Pierre ( The Widow of Saint-Peter ), minor character executioners are ostracized by the villagers. The profession of executioner sometimes ran through a family, especially in France, where the Sanson family provided six executioners between 1688 and 1847 and the Deibler dynasty provided five between 1879 and its 1981 abolition. The latter's members included Louis Deibler, his son Anatole, Anatole's nephew Jules-Henri Desfourneaux, his other nephew André Obrecht , and André's nephew Marcel Chevalier . In Britain,
3600-456: The general public favored the judgment, and the Nikkei lent its support to it. The Sankei Shimbun , a major national paper on the right, evaluated the judgement with a phrase "a natural and down-to-earth judgment of great significance". The Tokyo Shimbun expressed that capital punishment would be the inevitable sentence in consideration of the brutality of the murder and the pain that
3672-428: The legs apart, burning the criminal at the stake, boiling the criminal in a pot, wrapping the criminal in a woven straw rug and throwing him under water, and so on. During this period, capital punishment by crucifixion was also practiced, which is believed to have begun under Western influence. In the early Edo period (1603–1867), there was no new code on capital punishment, and some of the methods of execution used in
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#17327652687783744-505: The most notable dynasty was the Pierrepoints, who provided three executioners between 1902 and 1956 – Henry, his brother Thomas, and Henry's son Albert . Unlike in France and many other European countries, far from being shunned, British executioners such as William Marwood , James Berry , Albert Pierrepoint , and Harry Allen were widely known and respected by the public. In Japan, executioners have been held in contempt as part of
3816-715: The number of inmates executed on a given day; before then, a total was released annually with the Ministry not "confirm[ing] that executions had been carried out". As of December 2007, inmates' names were being announced on the day of execution. Having signed both the Convention on the Rights of the Child and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights , which forbid any executions for those under
3888-668: The other hand, cite a low prosecution rate and a different method of calculating the conviction rate than in other countries as reasons for Japan's high conviction rate. According to them, Japanese prosecutors formally prosecute about 8% of the cases they accept. These are the cases that prosecutors believe are certain to result in a conviction. About 60% of the cases they accept are not prosecuted, and about 30% are summarily tried and punished with fines of 1 million yen or less. Amnesty also reports allegations of abuse of suspects during these interrogations. There are reports of physical abuse, sleep deprivation and denial of food, water and use of
3960-508: The parents of his love interest and setting fire to their home in Yamanashi prefecture on 12 October 2021, thus becoming the most recent case of a minor facing the death penalty in Japan. Endo, who was 19 at the time of the double murder, was the first minor to be given the death sentence since Japan lowered the legal adulthood age to 18 in April 2022. On 2 February 2024, Endo's death sentence
4032-451: The prisoner's family nor the general public (nor, by inference, the condemned's legal representation) are informed before the execution has taken place. Until the 1970s, execution dates in Japan were announced to the condemned before the execution; however, cases of death row suicides before execution led to a change, with communication coming to 1-2 hours before execution. From about 1998 until 2007, Japan's Ministry of Justice only released
4104-402: The rare executions was not enough to live off. In medieval Europe executioners also taxed lepers and prostitutes, and controlled gaming houses. They were also in charge of the latrines and cesspools, and disposing of animal carcasses. The term is extended to administrators of severe physical punishment that is not prescribed to kill, but which may result in death. Executions in France (using
4176-574: The recent trend toward harsher punishments, backed by the growing public support for capital punishment, would encourage the court to sentence Kanda and Hori (of the Rie Isogai case) to death. Major national newspapers published editorials in support of this unorthodox judgment on the premise that capital punishment is retained. The Asahi Shimbun and the Mainichi Shimbun , both major national liberal newspapers, wrote in editorials that
4248-498: The samurai class. Even for the same beheading, there were differences in the treatment of the body after execution, depending on the severity of the crime. If the crime was serious, the body was exposed to the public for three days, used for test cutting with a Japanese sword ( tameshigiri ), or had its property confiscated by the government. In the Edo period, sawing was a method of execution for criminals who had killed their lord, which
4320-463: The saw was placed next to the criminal, who was buried from the neck down, and exposed to the public for two days before he was finally executed by crucifixion. In 1871 during the Meiji era (1868–1912), as the result of a major reform of the penal code, the number of crimes punishable by death was decreased and excessively harsh torture and flogging were abolished. In 1873, another revision resulted in
4392-426: The so-called death row phenomenon . The failure to give advanced notice of executions has been stated by the United Nations Human Rights Committee to be incompatible with articles 2, 7 and 10 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights . The Human Rights Documentation Centre says that the issuance of death warrants by the Ministry of Justice may be politically motivated. In 1997, Norio Nagayama ,
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#17327652687784464-418: The surveyed countries, including the United States (67%). At a 2003 trial, a Tokyo prosecutor presented the court a petition with 76,000 signatures as part of his case for a death sentence. During the late 1980s, four death penalty defendants who were sentenced in the period just after World War II were exonerated by the Supreme Court . Charles Lane of The Washington Post claims that this embarrassed
4536-522: The two men sentenced to death in the Isogai case had his sentence reduced to life imprisonment on appeal, and the Supreme Court refused to raise the punishment to death (but he was later sentenced to death in another murder case). The other defendant sentenced to death did not appeal and was hanged in 2015. Amnesty International argues that the Japanese justice system tends to place great reliance on confessions, even ones obtained under duress. According to
4608-471: The victim's family felt. They also noted, however, that it would be difficult for citizen judges to determine whether death penalty would be appropriate in this kind of case under the lay judge system , which would be started in May 2009. Hiroshi Itakura, a criminal law scholar at Nihon University , said that this decision could be a new criterion for capital punishment under the lay judge system. However, one of
4680-569: Was 19 years old, remains on death row awaiting execution. Another one of the juveniles, Takayuki Fukuda , was sentenced to hang by the Hiroshima High Court on 22 April 2008, and upheld by the Supreme Court on 20 February 2012. A month after his 18th birthday, he killed and then raped a woman, along with murdering her baby. On 18 January 2024, Yuki Endo was sentenced to death by the Kofu District Court for murdering
4752-424: Was a member of anti-death penalty MPs caucus group, as Minister of Justice . However, no official policy statement was made in this regard. Chiba only stated that "I will cautiously handle (the cases) based on the duties of the justice minister." The Times' speculation was conclusively disproven when Chiba signed two death warrants and personally witnessed their executions. Supporters say that capital punishment
4824-457: Was a minimal change to the previous survey conducted in 2015. When the question asked to choose between capital punishment and life imprisonment without parole, 52.0% selected the death penalty and 35.1% selected life without parole. In 2021, Ipsos conducted a multinational online survey on capital punishment among 55 countries. The poll showed 74% of Japan citizens favoring the death penalty, tied with South Korea and more than any other of
4896-551: Was finalized after Endo himself withdrew the appeal to the High Court, which was filed by his lawyer. Support for capital punishment has consistently been high among the Japanese public. In a poll conducted in November 2019 of 3,000 Japanese adults by the Cabinet Office , 80.8% of respondents stated they agreed that the death penalty is "necessary in some cases", while 9.0% stated it should be abolished in all cases. This
4968-414: Was finally hanged in 1997. The Tokyo High Court originally gave him a life term, but, in 1983, the Supreme Court of Japan held it was an error, and quashed this sentence before sending Nagayama back on death row . The court ruled that the penalty shall be decided in consideration of the degree of criminal liability and balance of justice based on a nine-point set of criteria. Though technically not
5040-535: Was killed, the defendants were sentenced to death. Since May 2009, district courts try capital cases using the lay judge system , where three professional judges sit with six randomly chosen citizens. Five votes of nine-member court, including at least one professional judge, are required for issuing a conviction and any punishment, including death. Japan has a civil law legal system ; therefore, appeal courts retry both facts and law. High courts retry cases with only three judges and no lay judges, and can either reduce
5112-409: Was performed by a soldier, such as the provost . A common stereotype of an executioner is a hooded medieval or absolutist executioner. Symbolic or real, executioners were rarely hooded, and not robed in all black; hoods were only used if an executioner's identity and anonymity were to be preserved from the public. As Hilary Mantel noted in her 2018 Reith Lectures , "Why would an executioner wear
5184-432: Was the most severe of the death penalties. The revised law by Tokugawa Yoshimune stated that the criminal should be buried in the ground from the neck down and exposed to the public for two days, and if any of the victim's relatives or passersby so requested, he or she should actually be sawed to death. After the law was revised, however, the sawing became a mere formality, and no saws were ever used in executions. In practice,
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