Death is different from any other punishment. As the U.S. Supreme Court has observed, death "differs more from life imprisonment than a 100-year sentence differs from one of only a year or two." In America, this recognition justifies a wide array of special procedural protections for capital defendants. Most notably, due process is not enough; there must be "super due process." International human rights law proceeds from a similar premise.

Japan is, with the United States, one of only two developed democracies that retain capital punishment and continue to carry out executions on a regular basis. But strikingly, while Japan has capital punishment, it does not really have capital trials, because nobody knows until the penultimate session — when prosecutors make their sentencing request — whether the punishment sought is death or something less. This has several unfortunate consequences, especially now that Japan's lay judge system requires citizens to help decide who the state should kill.

For starters, without a reliable basis for discerning whether a case is capital, there can be no promise or expectation of super due process. In Japan this means there is no special procedure for selecting lay judges, no special guarantee for ensuring adequate representation by defense counsel, no special sentencing hearing separate from the adjudication of guilt, and no special right to appeal. There is not even a requirement that all of the judges and lay judges agree that a death sentence is deserved — a mere "mixed majority" is enough.