With only a year left before the public starts taking part in criminal trials as lay judges, Diet members from the ruling and opposition camps formed a new group Thursday whose aim is to get life sentences without parole into the penal code.
The group, made up of lawmakers for and against the death penalty, believes the gap between capital punishment and the current version of the life sentence, which includes parole, is too wide.
Led by former Chief Cabinet Secretary Koichi Kato of the Liberal Democratic Party, the group plans to meet regularly so it can submit a bill to revise the law in time for the start of the "saiban-in" (lay judge) system next May.