is a Japanese lawyer known for his anti–

death penalty Capital punishment, also known as the death penalty and formerly called judicial homicide, is the state-sanctioned killing of a person as punishment for actual or supposed misconduct. The sentence ordering that an offender be punished in s ...

activism. With death penalty being a prominent method of punishment for violent criminals in Japan, Yasuda has defended many of these cases. At the time when Yasuda took on many of these cases, such cases were considered detrimental to a lawyer's career. He participated in many controversial trials because he believed that the suspects were tried unfairly as a result of mass media bashing.

Background

Yoshihiro Yasuda was born in Hyogo Prefecture on December 4, 1947. He graduated

Hitotsubashi University , formerly known as , is a national university, national research university in Tokyo, Japan. Often regarded as Japan’s foremost institution for the study of the social sciences, particularly commerce, economics, law, political science, sociolog ...

Faculty of Law in 1975. In 1977, Yasuda passed the bar exam, and in 1980, he officially became a lawyer after completing the Supreme Court Legal Research and Training Institute.

Criminal cases

Shinjuku bus attack

Yasuda was one of the defenders for a Shinjuku bus attacker who killed six people in 1980. The attacker was not sentenced to death, but he died by

suicide Suicide is the act of intentionally causing one's own death. Risk factors for suicide include mental disorders, physical disorders, and substance abuse. Some suicides are impulsive acts driven by stress (such as from financial or ac ...

in 1997.

Japan Air Lines Flight 404

Japan Air Lines Flight 404 Japan Air Lines Flight 404 was a passenger flight which was hijacked by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and Japanese Red Army on 20 July 1973. The flight departed Amsterdam-Schiphol International Airport, Netherlands, on 20 J ...

was an airliner hijacked by Palestinian and Japanese terrorists on July 20, 1973. As of 1987, Yasuda was elected to the counsel of the accused (Osamu Maruoka). Osamu Maruoka was sentenced to life imprisonment.

Aum Shinrikyo

Shoko Asahara , born , was a Japanese cult leader and terrorist who founded and led the doomsday cult known as Aum Shinrikyo. He was convicted of masterminding the 1995 sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway, and was also involved in several other crimes. As ...

, the founder of the religious

cult Cults are social groups which have unusual, and often extreme, religious, spiritual, or philosophical beliefs and rituals. Extreme devotion to a particular person, object, or goal is another characteristic often ascribed to cults. The term ...

group

Aum Shinrikyo , better known by their former name , is a Japanese new religions, Japanese new religious movement and doomsday cult founded by Shoko Asahara in 1987. It carried out the deadly Tokyo subway sarin attack in 1995 and was found to have been respo ...

, was trialed as the mastermind behind the crimes perpetrated by his followers, including the

Tokyo subway sarin gas attack The was a chemical domestic terrorist attack perpetrated on 20 March 1995, in Tokyo, Japan, by members of the Aum Shinrikyo cult. In five coordinated attacks, the perpetrators released sarin on three lines of the Tokyo Metro (then ''Teito Rapid ...

. Yasuda was the court-appointed attorney to defend Asahara in 1995, but was forced to resign from the team due to his arrest in 1998 . asserted that the arrest was made because prosecutors were dissatisfied with Yasuda's court tactics to delay the trial as long as possible to avoid the likely death sentence on Asahara. 1,200 lawyers listed as Yasuda's defenders, and

Japan Federation of Bar Associations Japan is an island country in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean off the northeast coast of the Asia, Asian mainland, it is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan and extends from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea ...

and

Amnesty International Amnesty International (also referred to as Amnesty or AI) is an international non-governmental organization focused on human rights, with its headquarters in the United Kingdom. The organization says that it has more than ten million members a ...

protested that the arrest was unfair. After his legal complications were settled in 2003, Yasuda became Asahara's private lawyer. In September 15, 2006, the Supreme Court upheld the death sentence on Asahara.

Masumi Hayashi

Yasuda defended Masumi Hayashi, who was convicted of putting poison in a pot of curry being served at a 1998 summer festival in the Sonobe district of

Wakayama, Wakayama Wakayama City Hall is the capital city of Wakayama Prefecture in the Kansai region of Japan. , the city had an estimated population of 351,391 in 157066 households and a population density of 1700 persons per km². The total area of the city is ...

, Japan. Yasuda was asked by Kazuyoshi Miura, who was exchanging letters with Masumi Hayashi, to work on this trial. Despite Yasuda's efforts, she was sentenced to death in 2002.

Hikari City homicides

Yasuda was the chief defender for a man who raped and strangled a 23-year-old woman to death and murdered her 11-month-old daughter in 1999 in Hikari city, Yamaguchi. This case has received much attention because of the circumstances of the crime and the possibility of the death penalty being used: the

age of majority The age of majority is the threshold of legal adulthood as recognized or declared in law. It is the moment when a person ceases to be considered a minor (law), minor, and assumes legal control over their person, actions, and decisions, thus te ...

in Japan is 18, but in 1999 it was still set to 20, however perpetrators that were under 20 but over 18 when they committed the crime, as in the Hikari city case, could receive the full sentence. In 2006 the Supreme Court ruled that the perpetrator's age at the time of the crime did not exempt him from the death penalty. Yasuda and the defense team tried to prevent the death penalty from being applied by claiming that the perpetrator did not intend to kill the woman or her baby. In March 2006, Yasuda and his group of attorneys were absent from the oral argument hearing for an unknown reason. The Japanese media considered their behavior a tactic to delay the trial just as they did during the Asahara trial; the Supreme Court ordered them to attend the next hearing. The perpetrator was sentenced to death by the Hiroshima High Court in April 2008.

Arrest

On December 6, 1998, Yasuda was arrested on charges of

obstruction of justice In United States jurisdictions, obstruction of justice refers to a number of offenses that involve unduly influencing, impeding, or otherwise interfering with the justice system, especially the legal and procedural tasks of prosecutors, investiga ...

(the compulsory seizure of rental income of one of the failed ''jusen'' mortgage lenders). Yasuda was charged with advising the Singaporean real estate developer Sun Chungli and his son Naoaki to set up a dummy company to hide assets. Sun was the president of Sun's Corporation Tokyo Ltd., a major borrower from the several former, now obsolete ''jusen'' housing loan companies. Yasuda was accused by the police of conspiring with Sun to hide rental income of approximately 200 million yen by using a dummy company by the name of Wide Treasure. The police suspected that Yasuda instructed the Sun family on how to hide assets. Yasuda acknowledged that he became the legal advisor for Sun in 1991, but argued that he gave advice within a legal framework. Yasuda denied the charges, and claimed he had no involvement in the Wide Treasure operation while the Sun family pleaded guilty. Yasuda was acquitted in 2003.

Yasuda on mass media

Yasuda's reason for defending the accused who are labelled by society as highly vicious criminals is that he believes their chance of a fair trial is taken away by media bashings. Yasuda fears the recent trend by the media to label people as vicious villains to bury the possibility of a legitimate trial for the accused as a signal of a crisis of democracy in Japan. Yasuda criticizes the premise of modern Japanese law that deviates from justice as the need for assumed innocence has increasingly become a prerequisite for acquittal; he sees this as a crisis in the judicial system.

Movies

, a

documentary A documentary film (often described simply as a documentary) is a nonfiction Film, motion picture intended to "document reality, primarily for instruction, education or maintaining a Recorded history, historical record". The American author and ...

directed by Junichi Saito that explores the issue of capital punishment with a focus on Yasuda, was released in theaters on June 30, 2012. The movie is based on a TV show that aired midnights in 2011. The film was also screened at the

Human Rights Documentary Film Show in Hong Kong. Cast and crew: *Narration: Taro Yamamoto *Director: Junichi Saito *Producer: Katsuhiko Abuno *Music: Shouhei Murai *Music producer: Kozue Okada *Filming: Akihiko Iwai *Editor: Tetsuji Yamamoto

Books

*''Shikei Bengonin: Ikiru to Iu Kenri''

References

External links

‘Amnesty International calls for inquiry into arrest of prominent human rights activist’
(In English)

Japan Policy Research Institute (In English). {{DEFAULTSORT:Yasuda, Yoshihiro 1947 births Living people 20th-century Japanese lawyers Japanese anti–death penalty activists 21st-century Japanese lawyers Activists from Hyōgo Prefecture