The Diet on April 27 revised the Criminal Law and the Criminal Procedure Law to abolish the statute of limitations for crimes whose maximum penalty is capital punishment, such as murder and robbery murder, and to double the period of the statute to 30 years, 20 years or 10 years, respectively, for crimes whose maximum penalty is 15, 10 or five years' imprisonment.
The revisions respond to the feelings of family members of crime victims. But there is the smell of political calculation on the part of political parties that supported the revisions — the ruling parties as well as the Liberal Democratic Party and Komeito — to win votes in the coming Upper House election.
The revisions were drafted in a hasty manner. The Justice Ministry's Legislative Council proposed the revisions in early February after about three months of discussions. The Upper House passed the bills after two weeks of deliberations; then the Lower House passed them 11 days after starting deliberations. In an unusual move, the government made the revisions effective about four hours after the bills' passage. This enabled the investigation of a 1995 murder, whose statute of limitations was to expire within the day, to continue.