[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----worldwide

[Rick Halperin]

May 6


SCOTLAND:

Irvine Welsh makes Kenny Richey movie for Edinburgh Film Festival


TRAINSPOTTING author Irvine Welsh has made a movie about former death row
Scot Kenny Richey.

The short film centres on Richey's struggle to readapt to life since his
release from a US jail in January.

Now the former inmate, who is currently unemployed, says he fancies a job
as an actor.

The movie will be premiered at this summer's Edinburgh International Film
Festival (EIFF) which is officially launched on Wednesday.

The picture, which is currently untitled, was filmed last month in and
around Richey's Dalry neighbourhood.

Welsh and his film crew met with the former inmate at his mum's flat where
they enjoyed a few cans of beer.

Stony-faced Richey is seen talking about his fight against depression
since he was released from an American jail last January.

The former US marine was also rigged up to an audio device which recorded
his heartbeat which is used as the movie's soundtrack. Richey suffered
heart problems while living on death row.

The pair are then seen leaving the flat and walking along the street
swigging from their tins of lager.

They make their way to the local pub, Dickens Lounge Bar, where they
happily chat away with regulars.

The movie is approximately ten minutes long and is forms part of a
collection of other short films.

Richey is currently looking for a job and says the experience has given
him the taste for the big screen.

He said: "I enjoyed filming and wouldn't mind doing more in the future.

"However at the moment, I would do anything  I don't care what.

"I just want to start earning money and have a normal life like anybody
else."

The ex-con says he was only too happy to work with Welsh as he is a big
fan of the author.

He said: "I've got a lot of love and respect for Irvine. He is a great guy
and we got on really well. "He even invited me to stay with him in
Dublin."

Richey recently revealed how he had been barred from a string of Edinburgh
nightclubs who said he was bad for their image.

He said: "I hate bouncers. I could take them out before they blink and
they'd be too goddamn stupid to realise it.

"They stand there with all the attitude. Sometimes when I ask them why I
am not getting in they just say because they said so.

"I prefer to drink locally anyway. People there treat me normally."

Richey was freed from death row after agreeing a plea bargain to quash his
conviction for the murder of 2-year-old Cynthia Collins.

The toddler died in a fire in her Columbus, Ohio, apartment while drunken
revellers partied outside.

Richey always denied setting fire to the apartment building in a revenge
attack on a former lover who lived below the dead girl's flat.

The EIFF's programme is being officially launched tomorrow.

Last year Halam Foe, starring Billy Elliot's Jamie Bell, opened the event
which started in 1947 as a documentary-based festival.

Previously it has showcased the blockbusters The Full Monty, East Is East,
Billy Elliot and Amelie. The EIFF takes place this year from June 18  29.

(source: The Scotsman)






JAPAN:

Broadcast of execution forces Japan to debate death penalty


The audio is scratchy and the voice of the protagonist has been altered to
hide his identity. Those minor failings aside, the broadcast today of the
execution of a man more than 50 years ago is the 1st time most Japanese
have been confronted by the grim reality of their country's use of the
death penalty.

Campaigners hope the documentary, aired by Nippon Cultural Broadcasting,
will strengthen calls for Japan to fall into line with every other
developed country except the US and abolish capital punishment.

The station defended its decision to air the execution amid accusations
that it had invaded the man's privacy in his final, desperate moments
alive.

"We aren't trying to make a statement for or against the death penalty," a
spokesman told the Asahi Shimbun newspaper. "Our only intention is to
present the reality of executions and let our listeners decide for
themselves."

Others welcomed the broadcast for giving an unprecedented insight into
Japan's secretive and, critics say, peculiarly inhumane use of capital
punishment.

"If the justice ministry masks the reality, then it is up to the media to
expose it," the filmmaker Tatsuya Mori told the paper. "There is great
significance in letting the public know the truth."

The recording, made at Osaka detention centre in 1955 to educate prison
service workers, opens with a shaky rendition of Auld Lang Syne as the
condemned man's fellow inmates watch him being taken from the cells.

Moments later the prisoner, whose identity and crime are not revealed,
says goodbye to his sister, who breaks down as he asks her to apologise to
their mother and take care of his children.

He is offered a final cigarette and even manages to share a joke with
prison staff. In a dramatic finale, the chants of Buddhists priests are
punctured by the opening of the trapdoor and the snap of the rope as it
tightens around the condemned man's neck.

Death does not come until 14 minutes later, when prison officers confirm
that his heart has stopped beating.

Aside from the introduction of stronger nylon rope, little about the way
Japan executes its criminals has changed in the intervening years.

Typically, death row inmates learn of their execution just minutes before
they are led to the gallows; their families are informed later so they can
collect the corpse for cremation.

Though Japan's "secret executions" enjoy widespread public support, they
have been denounced by Amnesty International, the EU and the UN, which has
called for a global moratorium on the death penalty.

Japan has hanged seven people already this year, including 4 in 1 day last
month, compared with 9 in 2007 and 4 in 2006, raising fears that it has
embarked on a campaign of mass executions in defiance of international
opinion.

The justice minister, Kunio Hatoyama, has called for the introduction of a
faster, more efficient system that would no longer require his signature
on execution orders.

The broadcast has rekindled the hanging debate ahead of the introduction
next year of a lay judge system in which citizens, with the help of
professional judges, will rule on murders and other serious offences for
the 1st time since Japan's military leaders suspended the jury system in
1943.

Overseas campaigners say Japan's widespread use of forced confessions
risks sending innocent people to their deaths.

"Japanese authorities can learn much from America's experience with false
confessions," said Steven A Drizin, legal director of the Centre on
Wrongful Convictions at Northwestern University.

The centre recently filed an amicus curiae - or "friend of the court" -
brief on behalf of Masaru Okunishi, an 81-year-old Japanese death row
convict who has been proclaiming his innocence since 1969.

"Japanese law enforcement authorities, who have a 99% conviction rate,
rely on exceedingly long interrogations and physical coercion to obtain
confessions," Drizin said in a statement.

Of the 165 inmates on death row in Japan at least a dozen are in their 70s
and 80s.

They include Iwao Hakamada, a 72-year-old former professional boxer who
has spent a record 40 years on death row for the murders of a company
executive, his wife and 2 children in 1966.

Pressure for his release mounted after the judge who convicted him said
last year that he was now convinced of Hakamada's innocence. His
supporters said detectives beat him into confessing during marathon
interrogations sessions that went on daily for almost 3 weeks.

Sakae Menda, whose 34 years on death row ended when his conviction was
quashed at a retrial in 1983, said: "I saw dozens of my fellow inmates
sent to their deaths while I was in prison. None of them was satisfied
with their conviction."

(source: The Guardian)